Staff profile

Douglas J. Davies is an anthropologist and theologian specialising in the history, theology, and social-scientific study of death. Educated in Social Anthropology (1966-69) and Theology (1971-74) at Durham University, with the intervening years spent at the Oxford Institute of Social Anthropology under the distinguished sociologist Bryan Wilson of All Souls (1969-71), Davies then moved to Nottingham University in 1974 as inaugural Lecturer in the Philosophy and Phenomenology of Religion where he also completed his first doctorate (1979). Returning to Durham in 1997 as Professor in the Study of Religion, Davies continues to teach undergraduate and postgraduate modules on a variety of topics including Worldview-Religious Studies (Level 1); Death, Ritual, and Belief (Level 2); Emotion, Identity, and Religion (Level 3); and Ritual, Symbolism, and Belief in the Anthropology of Religion (Level 4). He also serves as Director of the Centre for Death and Life Studies.   

Davies' broader academic interests embrace the anthropology, sociology, and phenomenology of religion, Mormonism, Sikhism, Anglicanism, and the ongoing interface between Anthropology and Theology (2002). His noteworthy titles among many include Meaning and Salvation in Religious Studies (1984); The Mormon Culture of Salvation (2000); The Encyclopedia of Cremation (2005); The Theology of Death (2008); Emotion, Identity, and Religion (2011); and Mors Britannica: Lifestyle and Death-Style in Britain Today (2015). Death, Ritual, and Belief: The Rhetoric of Funerary Rites, now in its third edition (1997, 2002, 2017), has been translated into five languages. Elected as a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in 2009, the Learned Society of Wales in 2012, and the British Academy in 2017, Davies' contribution to scholarship has also been recognised internationally in numerous collaborations and appointments and by an honorary doctorate from Uppsala University (1998). This was shortly followed, in 2004, by a higher doctorate for research (D.Litt.) from the University of Oxford. In 2024, Davies published a major six-volume work on The Cultural History of Death spanning 2,500 years from Classical Antiquity to the Modern Age.

• 2025: ASDS Lifetime Achievement Award:
• 2017: Fellow of the British Academy:
• 2017: Guest, M., Middlemiss-Le Mon, M. (Eds.). (2017). Death, Life and Laughter: Essays on Religion in Honour of Douglas Davies. Routledge: Birth, death and the rituals that take us from one to the other tell us a lot about humanity and our quest to understand ourselves. It is cross-disciplinary analyses of the life course that have generated the most profound insights into religion and spirituality, challenging the concepts and methods we commonly use to understand these universal aspects of human experience. Douglas Davies' work is a rare example of this kind of scholarship, challenging the boundaries that separate theology from the social sciences and that divide academia from public life. This book serves as a tribute to Davies' work and a critical commentary on the questions that arise from it. Featuring essays by renowned international scholars, this book brings cutting-edge research into conversation with ongoing debates about disciplinary difference and the nature of scholarship.
• 2016: Honorary Vice President of the Cremation Society of Great Britain:
• 2012: Fellow of the Learned Society of Wales:
• 2009: Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences:
• 2009 - 2012: President of the British Association for the Study of Religion:
• 2004: Doctor of Letters (D.Litt.), University of Oxford:
• 1998: Doctor of Sacred Theology (honoris causa), Uppsala University, Sweden: