Professor Will Davies

Staff details

Professor Will Davies

Position

Co-Head of the Department

Department

Politics and International Relations

Email

w.davies (@gold.ac.uk)

Goldsmiths Research Centres/Groups

My research looks at how expert knowledge is deployed politically in neoliberal societies.

I am a sociologist and political economist, working on diverse topics, including neoliberalism, happiness science, environmental politics and anti-expert politics. What links this work is an interest in the interface of knowledge and power, drawing on the work of Michel Foucault, Luc Boltanski and Max Weber. I am Co-Director of the interdisciplinary Political Economy Research Centre and convene the BA in Politics Philosophy & Economics.

Academic qualifications

  • BA Social and Political Sciences, University of Cambridge 1998
  • MA Modern European Philosophy, University of Essex 1999
  • PhD Sociology, Goldsmiths 2009

Teaching and supervision

BA Politics Philosophy & Economics

Publications and research outputs

Book

Davies, Will; Dutta, Sahil Jai; Taylor, Nick and Tazzioli, Martina. 2022. Unprecedented? How COVID-19 Revealed the Politics of Our Economy. London: Goldsmiths Press. ISBN 9781913380120

Davies, Will. 2020. This is Not Normal: The collapse of liberal Britain. London: Verso.

Davies, Will. 2018. Nervous States: How feeling took over the world. London: Jonathan Cape. ISBN 9781787330108

Edited Book

Davies, Will, ed. 2018. Economic Science Fictions. London: Goldsmiths Press. ISBN 9781906897680

Book Section

Davies, Will. 2020. Post-Liberal Competitions?: Pragmatics of Gamification and Weaponisation. In: David Stark, ed. The Performance Complex: Competition and Competitions in Social Life. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780198861669

Davies, Will. 2018. The Neoliberal State: Power Against Politics. In: Damien Cahill; Melinda Cooper; Martijn Konings and David Primrose, eds. The Sage Handbook of Neoliberalism. London: Sage. ISBN 9781412961721

Davies, Will. 2017. Elites without Hierarchies: Intermediaries, 'Agency' and the super-rich. In: Ray Forrest; Sin Yee Koh and Bart Wissink, eds. Cities and the Super-Rich: Real Estate, Elite Practices, and Urban Political Economies. New York: Palgrave MacMillan, pp. 19-38. ISBN 9781137557155

Article

Davies, Will. 2024. Owning Towards Death: The Asset Condition as Existential Conundrum. Finance & Society, 10(3), pp. 215-233. ISSN 2059-5999

Davies, Will. 2024. Reaction Value: Affective reflex in the digital public sphere. Distinktion: Journal of Social Theory, 25(3), pp. 297-317. ISSN 1600-910X

Davies, Will; Dutta, Sahil Jai and Taylor, Nick. 2024. Stay Home: Mapping the New Domestic Regime. Economy & Society, 53(3), pp. 400-423. ISSN 0308-5147

Conference or Workshop Item

O'Sullivan, Simon D.; Davies, Will and Hameed, Ayesha. 2018. 'Tank Book Talks (with Will Davies and Ayesha Hameed)'. In: Tank Book Talks. Tank, Great Portland Street, London, United Kingdom 18 October 2018.

Digital

Jones, Hannah; Bhattacharyya, Gargi; Forkert, Kirsten; Davies, Will; Dhaliwal, Sukhwant; Gunaratnam, Yasmin; Jackson, Emma and Saltus,, Roiyah. 2014. "Swamped" by anti-immigration campaigns.

Media engagements

London Review of Books
regular contributor

The Guardian
regular contributor