Search

Dr Dominic Davies

Reader in English

School of Communication & Creativity Department of Media, Culture and Creative Industries

Contact details

Personal links

About

Overview

Dr Dom Davies is an academic and author whose research focuses on infrastructure – roads, railways, energy systems, homes, borders: the material structures that underpin modern life. He is particularly interested in the lived experience of infrastructure and the way it shapes our political imagination. His writing connects infrastructure to histories of empire and nationalism, and to cultures of place and beloning, both in Britain and across the post-imperial world. Through knowledge exchange and impact work, he uses practices in the arts and humanities to formulate meaningful solutions to infrastructure problems. He is the convener of the Thinking Through Infrastructure Network (TTiN) and more detail about his work is available here.

Dom's most recent book, The Broken Promise of Infrastructure, tackles the divisive cultural politics that have been used to deflect attention away from Britain's failing infrastructure, from Brexit through to the "levelling up" agenda and beyond. With case studies that range from Stoke-on-Trent and South Africa to Silicon Valley, the book shows that these broken promises run back through broader histories of industry and empire, challenging dominant ways of thinking about infrastructure and asking how we can reclaim its world-shaping force for ourselves.

Dom's most recent co-authored book, Graphic Refuge: Visuality and Mobility in Refugee Comics, written with Candida Rifkind, explores graphic narratives about a range of refugee experiences, from war, displacement, and perilous sea crossings to detention camps, resettlement schemes, and second-generation diasporas. It shows how comics demand that we apprehend the historical construction of categories such as “citizen” and “refugee” through systems of empire, settler colonialism, and racial capitalism, and move us towards more expansive ideas of refuge as a lived political relationship.

Dom holds a DPhil and British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship from the University of Oxford. He has facilitated and convened a number of international research projects, networks, and conferences. He is always happy to hear from people with similar research interests, prospective PhD students, and those interested in collaborating on future projects.

Qualifications

  • DPhil, University of Oxford, United Kingdom, September 2011 - March 2015
  • MA Victorian Literature, University of Liverpool, United Kingdom, September 2009 - December 2010
  • BA English Language & Literature, University of Liverpool, United Kingdom, September 2006 - July 2009

Employment

  • Reader in English, City St George's, University of London, United Kingdom, August 2024 - present
  • Senior Lecturer in English, City, University of London, United Kingdom, August 2020 - July 2024
  • Lecturer in English, City, University of London, United Kingdom, April 2018 - July 2020
  • Research Associate, University of Oxford, United Kingdom, April 2018 - April 2021
  • British Academy Postdoctoral Research Fellow, University of Oxford, United Kingdom, September 2015 - March 2018

Research

Convener, Thinking Through Infrastructure Network

A network that invites you to think through infrastructure – energy, transport, water, waste, housing, health – with methods from the arts, humanities, & social sciences. More info: https://researchcentres.citystgeorges.ac.uk/thinking-through-infrastructure-network#unit=about

Publications

Publications by category

Books (8)

Chapters (29)

  • Davies, D. (2025). Remote Sensing: Refugee Comics in Ruins. In Davies, D. and Rifkind, C. (Eds.), Graphic Refuge: Visuality and Mobility in Refugee Comics Wilfrid Laurier University Press. ISBN 9781771126915.
  • Davies, D. and Rifkind, C. (2025). Introduction. Graphic Refuge: Visuality and Mobility in Refugee Comics Wilfrid Laurier University Press. ISBN 9781771126915.
  • Vuohelainen, M. (2025). Rudyard Kipling. Victorian Ghost Story an Edinburgh Companion (pp. 210-224).
  • Davies, D. (2024). Graphic Borders. The Routledge Companion to Migration Literature (pp. 280-291). Routledge.
  • Davies, D. (2023). 4 Beyond experience. British culture after empire (pp. 87-105). Manchester University Press.
  • Davies, D. (2023). The Broken Promise of Infrastructure (Introduction). The Broken Promise of Infrastructure (pp. 9-28). Chadwell Heath, London: Lawrence Wishart. ISBN 9781913546359.
  • Davies, D. (2023). Intolerable fictions. Comics and Migration (pp. 257-270). Routledge India.
  • Blunt, G.D. (2023). Resistance. Encyclopedia of the Philosophy of Law and Social Philosophy (pp. 3071-3076). Springer Netherlands. ISBN 9789400765184.
  • Davies, D. (2022). Infrastructural Forms: Comics, Cities, Conglomerations. The Routledge Companion to Literary Urban Studies (pp. 163-176). London, UK: Routledge.
  • Boehmer, E. and Davies, D. (2022). Empire. Globalization and Literary Studies (pp. 80-94). Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9781108840927.
  • Davies, D. (2022). Pages of Exception: Graphic Reportage as World Literature. Graphic Novels and Comics as World Literature (pp. 11-32).
  • Davies, D. (2022). "The Gutters of History" Geopolitical Pasts and Imperial Presents in Recent Graphic Nonfiction. Drawing the past (pp. 56-78). University Press of Mississippi. ISBN 9781496837226.
  • Davies, D. (2022). The Precarious Rule of Aesthetics: Form, Informality, Infrastructure. Representations of Precarity in South Asian Literature in English (pp. 69-86). Springer International Publishing. ISBN 9783031068164.
  • Davies, D. (2020). Crossing borders, bridging boundaries: Reconstructing the rights of the refugee in comics. Refuge in a Moving World Tracing Refugee and Migrant Journeys Across Disciplines ISBN 9781787353190.
  • Davies, D. (2020). Urban Comix: Subcultures, Infrastructures and “the Right to the City” in Delhi. Delhi: New Literatures of the Megacity Routledge. ISBN 9780367363390.
  • Davies, D. (2020). Introduction: Documenting Trauma in Comics. Palgrave Studies in Comics and Graphic Novels (pp. 1-26). Springer International Publishing. ISBN 9783030379971.
  • Davies, D. (2019). Rudyard Kipling and the networks of empire. In Varma, P. and Pradhan, A. (Eds.), Kipling and Yeats at 150 Retrospectives/Perspectives (pp. 192-210). New Delhi, India: Routledge. ISBN 9781138343900.
  • Davies, D., Lombard, E. and Mountford, B. (2019). Introduction. Fighting words: Books and the making of the postcolonial world. (pp. 1-26).
  • Davies, D. (2019). From communism to postcapitalism: Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels's The communist manifesto (1848). Fighting Words Fifteen Books that Shaped the Postcolonial World (pp. 27-42).
  • Davies, D. (2019). Rudyard Kipling and the networks of empire: Writing imperial infrastructure in The Light that Failed and Captains Courageous. Kipling and Yeats at 150 Retrospectives Perspectives (pp. 192-210).
  • Davies, D. (2019). Infrastructural Violence. In Hague, I., Horton, I. and Mickwitz, N. (Eds.), Contexts of Violence in Comics Abingdon, Oxford: Routledge. ISBN 9781138484504.
  • Davies, D. (2018). Postcolonial Comics: Representing the Subaltern. In Garsha, J.J. (Ed.), Critical Insights: Postcolonial Literature (pp. 3-22). Salem Press. ISBN 9781682175590.
  • Boehmer, E. and Davies, D. (2018). Planned Violence: Post/Colonial Urban Infrastructures, Literature and Culture. Planned Violence (pp. 1-25). Springer International Publishing. ISBN 9783319913872.
  • Davies, D. and Boehmer, E. (2018). Postcolonialism and South-South Relations. In Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, E. and Daley, P. (Eds.), Routledge Handbook of South-South Relations Abingdon, UK: Routledge. ISBN 9781138652002.
  • In Davies, D., Lombard, E. and Mountford, B. (Eds.), (2017). Fighting Words. In Peter Lang UK.
  • Davies, D. (2017). From Communism to Postcapitalism: Marx and Engels’ The Communist Manifesto. Fighting Words Fourteen Books That Shaped the Postcolonial World Peter Lang Limited, International Academic Publishers. ISBN 9781906165550.
  • Davies, D. (2016). Resisting Neoliberalism from Mumbai's Margins: Occupying Literary and Urban Spaces in Aravind Adiga’s Last Man in Tower (2011). In Tickell, A. (Ed.), South-Asian Fiction in English: Contemporary Transformations (pp. 119-138). Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 9781137403544.
  • Davies, D. (2016). Sol T. Plaatje. The Encyclopedia of Postcolonial Studies Wiley-Blackwell. ISBN 9781444334982.
  • Davies, D. (2016). Occupying Literary and Urban Space: Adiga, Authenticity and the Politics of Socio-economic Critique. South-Asian Fiction in English (pp. 119-138). Palgrave Macmillan UK. ISBN 9781137403537.

Conference paper and proceedings

Journal articles (37)