Diane E Davis is a professor of political sociology, and head of the International Development Group in the Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning at MIT. Davis served as acting director of the Program on Human Rights and Justice at MIT from 2003-2004, and as Associate Dean of the School of Architecture and Planning from 2005-2007. She is currently a member of the Provost’s International Oversight Committee, a member of MIT’s Global Council, and a faculty affiliate of CIS.
Davis’s research and teaching interests include the politics of urban policy, cities in conflict, and the relationship between cities and national development. Recent research, supported by both the MacArthur Foundation and the Carnegie Corporation, focuses on violence and insecurity in cities of the global south, particularly the relationship between police abuse of power, deteriorating rule of law, and changing patterns and priorities of urban governance in countries undergoing political transition. Davis is a founding member of a newly formed international working group on Urban Resilience in Situations of Chronic Violence, and has recently been appointed a Scientific Committee Member of the European Research Council.
Her book publications include: Discipline and Development: Middle Classes and Prosperity in East Asia and Latin America (Cambridge University Press, 2004); Irregular Armed Forces and Their Role in Policies and State Formation, co-edited with Anthony Pereira (Cambridge University Press, 2003); Urban Leviathan: Mexico City in the Twentieth Century (Temple University Press, 1994); and Cities and Sovereignty: Identity Conflicts in the Urban Realm, co-edited with Nora Liberturn (Indiana University Press, forthcoming). Recent articles or book chapters include: “Divergent Epistemologies in the Search for Co-Existence: The Jerusalem 2050 Project” in Moshe Moaz (ed.), The Meeting of Civilizations: Muslims, Christians and Jews (Eastborne: Sussex Academic Press, 2008); “Urban Violence, Quality of Life, and the Future of Latin American Cities: The Dismal Record So Far, and the Search for New Analytical Frameworks to Sustain a Bias Towards Hope” in Allison Garland (ed.), Approaches to Global Urban Poverty: Setting the Research Agenda” (Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2008); “Insecure and Secure Cities: Towards a Reclassification of World Cities in a Global Era in MITIR: The MIT International Review (Spring 2008); “What Kind of Conflict? Cities, War, and the Failure of Urban Public Security” in Maciek Hawrylak (ed.), Human Security for an Urban Century: Local Challenges, Global Perspectives (Ottawa, Canada: Human Security Policy Division, Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Trade. 2007); “Scales of Conflict, Spaces of Contention” in Block # 03 (in English and Hebrew), 2006 special Issue on Y-UTOPIA; and “Speaking to the Silences: A New Sociological Imagination for a post-9/11 World?” in the International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society (2006).
Davis has been editor of the research annual Political Power and Social Theory (Elsevier Ltd.) for the past 15 years.
