Biography

Gail Davies’ first degree was in Geography at Oxford University (1990 -1993), where she studied human and physical geography, and completed an undergraduate dissertation on soil microscopy.  She studied for her PhD on the development of the BBC Natural History Unit within the Geography Department at UCL (1993 -1997), assisted by colleagues in the UCL Department of Science and Technology Studies.  She has taught at UCL since 1997 and is now Senior Lecturer in Human Geography.

Gail Davies maintains a strong interest in the relationship between human and physical geography, the practices of knowledge-making and world-making, and the way relations between humans and nonhumans are imagined, practiced and governed.  Theoretically, her research is centred on the charting the emerging geographies of science and technology, developing and evaluating innovative methodologies for public engagement with science, and rethinking the place of animals and the politics of difference in contemporary biomedical research.  Empirically, she is committed to ethnographic research and policy experimentation with diverse knowledge communities – including filmmaking, ecological consultancy, public engagement with science, organ matching protocols, animal welfare and functional genomics – arguing it is only through tracing the intersection of technological, institutional and material practices in situ that we can suggest where the politics and ethics of life might be located.

Gail Davies is currently researching the changing nature of international collaborations in biomedical research, and the reconfiguration of experimental sites and subjects in post genomics, through tracing the changing use of mice as model organisms.  This research formed the basis of a series of projects funded by an ESRC Research Fellowship from 2007 - 2010, under the title of Biogeography and Transgenic Life.  She is currently working on a monograph to explore the re-organization of expert communities and biological resources in functional genomics and translational resarch, with a particular emphasis on changing epistemic and ethical issues in production, circulation and regulation of genetically altered mice in the UK, USA and Singapore.  Complementing this research, she is collaborating with the artist Helen Scalway on innovative forms of diagramming these spaces as a means to foster interdisciplinary reflection and public understanding of emerging experimental practices, sites and subjects.

Gail Davies has been Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers) since 1997, a Member of the Associate Association of American Geographers since 2002, and a Member of the Society for Social Studies of Science since 2007.  She was elected Chair of Social and Cultural Geography Research Group of the RGS for 2009-2012, and Research Group Representative for the RGS Research Committee for 2010-2013. She has served on the editorial board of a number of international journals, including Blackwell Geography Compass, Geoforum, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers and Public Understanding of Science.  She recently collaborated with colleagues in Geography and Science and Technology Studies at UCL in the development of an on-line resource, the Locating Technoscience Reader.  Currently, she is on the organizing committee of the Knowledge/Value seminar series with colleagues in anthropology, history of science and STS at the University of Chicago and elsewhere. She is also sometime associate of the Office of Experiments.  Within the Geography Department, her work links to research foci in Environment, Landscape and Society and Mobility, Identity and Security.