Dr Archie Davies

I am cultural and historical geographer working across the fields of political ecology and the history and philosophy of geography. 

The first major theme of my research addresses food, hunger, nature, race, and embodiment. In this strand of my work, I have written about the coloniality of infrastructure, the racial division of nature, the history of landscape thinking, and the idea of socio-ecological metabolism. I am now taking this work forward through research projects on the history of meat extract, Oxo and Bovril, and the historical geography of painkillers.

My second main research area is the history of twentieth century geographical ideas in Latin America, particularly the Northeast of Brazil. My first book, A World Without Hunger: Josué de Castro and the history of geography (Liverpool, 2023), tells the story of Josué de Castro (1908-73), a Brazilian activist, politician and geographer. I follow Castro from his hometown of Recife to the Brazilian Congress, the UN, and the radical worlds of post-1968 Paris. I investigate how his ideas emerged and travelled, and how his work can help us think about hunger and geography today.

I am a research-led translator from Portuguese to English. I have translated Milton Santos’ 1978 classic work of critical geography, For a New Geography, and am working with Christen Smith and Bethânia Gomes to translate the writing of the Brazilian Black feminist activist and writer Beatriz Nascimento.