Professor Mark Davis

Profile

I have over 20 years’ experience in research, student education and leadership within Higher Education. A first gen scholar, I was awarded my Chair at Leeds in 2022.

I am Deputy Head of School (Strategy), Founding Director of the Bauman Institute and I co-lead the Leeds Relational Energy Group. Previously, I was an expert advisor to the Council of Europe, working intermittently in Paris and Strasbourg at the Social Cohesion Division.

I have a proven track record of successful collaboration with partners in business and industry, the public sector and civil society in pursuit of impactful solutions to grand challenge questions of sustainability and climate change.

In this context, I am best known for leading the research project that co-created the Community Municipal Investment (CMI) product – brought to market in 2020 as Local Climate Bonds – that to date has raised £12M for local authority-led net zero projects in the UK.

I also co-lead work applying insights from relational sociology to accelerate the decarbonisation of homes (‘retrofit’), shaping policy, delivery schemes and green finance packages at the national and regional level.

I have published extensively in these areas, with sustained momentum in capturing external grants from EU Horizon 2020, UKRI, UK Government, and charitable trusts and foundations to fund this interdisciplinary activity.

Committed to a purposeful public sociology, my work attracts a variety of stakeholders and audiences. I am an experienced speaker and presenter, with my work featured by the BBC, Times Radio, The Guardian, Another Europe, and other national and international platforms.

I am a long-standing member of the editorial board at Sociology, and have been an assessor of applications to Friends Provident Foundation’s ‘Fair Economy’ grant programme (2019-2024) and external examiner at the Brussels School of International Studies (2018-2021).

Watch: the launch of my book Crowdfunding and the Democratization of Finance (2021, Bristol University Press).

Previous Academic Leadership roles:

• REF2021 Impact Case Study Author (School, 2019-2021)
• Director of Recruitment and Admissions (School, 2015-2018)
• Director of Building Sustainable Societies (University, 2013-2016)
• Making a World of Difference, Alumni Campaign (Faculty, 2010-2018)
• Programme Manager, MA Social and Political Thought (School, 2010-2016)

Responsibilities

• Deputy Head of School (Strategy)
• Business Engagement & Enterprise Lead (Social Sciences)
• Founding Director of the Bauman Institute

Research interests

Inspired by Zygmunt Bauman’s sociology, my first monograph Freedom and Consumerism (Routledge, 2008) was reviewed in the Times Higher Education Supplement.

The book addresses how, in reducing the idea of freedom to just evermore consumer choice in market settings, individuals are becoming adiaphorized, experiencing chronic anxiety, and slowly surrending political freedoms and democratic rights.

This early part of my career was dedicated to theorising with Bauman. In 2010, I founded and for a decade directed the Bauman Institute at Leeds. I have organised special issues of journals (e.g., Thesis Eleven journal, Thinking in Dark Times with Zygmunt Bauman) and acted as the Senior Editor on five volumes dedicated to his work:

• Bauman’s Challenge (Palgrave, 2010)
• Liquid Sociology (Routledge, 2013)
• Culture and Art (Polity, 2021)
• History and Politics (Polity, 2023)
• Theory and Society (Polity, 2024)

My subsequent research on questions of economy – e.g., ‘ethical’ consumerism, social sustainability and investment in just climate futures – builds upon the insight that privileging individualised ‘free’ market choice serves to frustrate the emergence of more inclusive, collective solutions to shared systemic problems, especially in the context of climate breakdown. My work steadfastly refuses the idea that ‘there is no alternative’ to present social arrangements.

In foregrounding the ‘relational’ dynamics of these processes, I have opened up a space at the intersection of sociological theory and climate-facing social science that is striving to deliver measurable impact in policy and practice, as evidenced through my work on Local Climate Bonds and Retrofit.

Listen: a podcast interview of my work on Local Climate Bonds (co-hosted by Zoe Williams, The Guardian and Luke Cooper, LSE).

Watch: a short video of my work on Retrofit.

• Alternative Finance Opportunities for Green Energy
• Evaluating the Impact of the Leeds Retrofit Accelerator Hub
• Evaluating the Social Value of Innovative Finance: A Case Study of Community Municipal Bonds
• Finance and Procurement for Net-Zero
• Financial Innovation Today: Towards Economic Resilience (FITTER)
• Financing for Society: Crowdfunding Public Infrastructure (Pilot Fund)
• Innovative finance instruments and local public procurement for net zero
• PROSEU - Prosumers for the Energy Union
• Social Impacts of Local Energy Developments (SLED): A case study of Tidal Lagoon Swansea Bay

Qualifications

• PhD Sociology (University of Leeds, UK)
• MA Sociology (Distinction; University of Leeds, UK)
• BA Hons Social Science (Newcastle University, UK)

Professional memberships

• British Sociological Association (BSA)
• European Sociological Association (ESA)
• Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics (SASE)
• Priestley Centre for Climate Futures

Student education

I am committed to delivering a first-class learning experience for students of all ages and backgrounds to support the acquisition of skills needed for prosperous and impactful careers within and beyond the Academy.

I teach on modules across the School at undergraduate and postgraduate levels, as well as regularly supervise dissertation projects, on the following topics:

• Classical and Contemporary Sociological Theory
• Social and Public Policy
• Sociology of Climate Change
• Consumerism and Political Economy
• Philosophy of Social Science
• Social Research Methods

Doctoral Research

I welcome enquiries from motivated and qualified applicants from around the world who are interested in post-doc fellowships or PhD study at Leeds, especially those with cutting-edge and impactful projects in the fields of economic sociology.

I am particularly interested in mentoring early-career scholars that pursue theoretical, qualitative and ethnographic research projects aligned with my interests in alternative economies, climate futures and consumerism from a sociology / social policy perspective.

Since 2012, I have mentored 7 post-doc research fellows and supervised 9 doctoral students, all passing successfully. I currently supervise 3 PhD Projects:

• Paula Correa Bologna (Housing Financialization in two Brazilian Capitals: an ethnographic approach to debt and gender)
• Menik Budiarti (Micro Business Growth Among Blind and Visually Impaired People in Indonesia and Its Impacts towards Their Quality of Life)
• Sherif Youssef (How do Social Enterprises emerge as a civic need within the emerging markets? Egypt as a case study)

I have examined 7 doctorates, 3 internationally at Universities in Melbourne (2017), Tallinn (2018), and Valencia (2020).

I have hosted international doctoral researchers visiting Leeds from Australia, Brazil, China, Guatemala, Mexico, Poland and Spain.

Research groups and institutes

• The Bauman Institute

Current postgraduate researchers

• Paula Correa Bologna
• Menik Budiarti