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Biography

Gareth Davies joined the Institute as Professor of American History in 2020, having spent the previous twenty years lecturing at St. Anne鈥檚 College, Oxford. Before that, he taught at Lancaster University (in American Politics) and at the University of Manchester (in American Studies).

Professor听Davies is an environmental and political historian. His first two books each explored the political legacy of the 1960s, the first in relation to Lyndon Johnson鈥檚 鈥榃ar on Poverty鈥�, the second with respect to the federal role in education.听 As with much of his research, each book sought to understand the circumstances under which governmental power increases in American political culture, despite the persistence of a strong tradition of anti-statism. The first of them, , was awarded the Organisation of American Historians鈥� inaugural Ellis W. Hawley Prize, given for the best book in American political economy.听 His second, , won the Richard E. Neustadt book prize, awarded by the Political Studies Association鈥檚 American Politics Group for the best book in American politics or political history.听 In addition to these two monographs, Davies has also edited volumes on the Reagan Presidency (with Cheryl Hudson) and on the history of U.S. presidential elections (with Julian Zelizer).听

Research Summary

The book that Professor Davies is currently completing is entitled A Nation at Risk: America鈥檚 Three Disaster Regimes and the Roots of Environmental Crisis. In it, he explores how the 鈥榗ulture of risk that Americans inhabited during the Early National Period yielded during the later 19^th and 20^th centuries to a growing 鈥榗ulture of security鈥�. Having initially been mostly fatalistic about disaster, in other words, they developed increasingly ambitious mechanisms of collective action designed both to ameliorate disasters and even to prevent them. By the middle decades of the twentieth century, he argues, these efforts were paying rich dividends: the number of lives lost in fires, epidemic diseases, floods, hurricanes and other disasters had plummeted sharply. Heavy losses of life that in earlier years would have been unsurprising by the 1950s and 1960s seemed aberrant and shocking. By the end of the twentieth century, however, this vaulting culture of security was also starting to have some sharply negative consequences, as government programmes designed to protect hazardous locations from disaster encouraged risky development that paradoxically leave these communities more at risk than before, especially in the context of climate change.听

Teaching Summary

Undergraduate:

AMER0081: The Haitian Revolution

Post Graduate Taught:

AMER0082: The Making of the Modern U.S. Presidency

Professor Davies will also be contributing to the delivery of the following modules:听

AMER0050: The Making of Modern America: The United States since 1920

AMER0057: Researching the Americas and AMER0059: Contemporary Issues in the Americas

Research Supervision:

Professor Davies has supervised over twenty doctoral dissertations to completion. He would be pleased to hear from postgraduate applicants interested in any topic in American political or environmental history, or in the history of the U.S. welfare state.

Media appearances

• Gareth Davies interview by Italian newspaper Avvenire on violence in American politics one year after the invasion of Capitol Hill | January 5, 2022

• Zoe Hyman听and听Gareth Davies听on the roots of a divided America. | January 20, 2021

Please visit our Staff Media Appearances pages

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