Diane Davis

Diane Davis

Charles Dyer Norton Professor of Regional Planning and Urbanism
Diane Davis
Diane E. Davis is the Charles Dyer Norton Professor of Regional Development and Urbanism and former Chair of the Department of Urban Planning and Design at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design (GSD). Before to moving to the GSD in 2011, Davis served as the head of the International Development Group in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at MIT, where she also was Associate Dean of the School of Architecture and Planning.  After a year teaching in Social Studies at Harvard, she started her academic career at the Graduate Faculty of the New School for Social Research where she held a joint appointment in Sociology and Historical Studies. Trained as a sociologist with an interest in political geography (BA Northwestern University, Ph.D UCLA) Davis’s research interests include the relations between urbanization and national development, urban governance, informality, and the growth and structure of cities in the global south, with a special emphasis on Latin America and on questions of political power, sovereignty, urban violence, and police impunity. Current projects include an examination of conflict cities, spatial strategies for political mobilization, and territories at risk. Her books include: Cities and Sovereignty: Identity Conflicts in the Urban Realm (Indiana University Press, 2011); Discipline and Development: Middle Classes and Prosperity in East Asia and Latin America (Cambridge University Press, 2004; named the ASA’s 2005 Best Book in Political Sociology); Irregular Armed Forces and their Role in Politics and State Formation (Cambridge University Press, 2003); and Urban Leviathan: Mexico City in the Twentieth Century (Temple University Press 1994; Spanish translation 1999).