Martin Davies

In recent years, Professor Davies has concentrated on his work as an academic author and editor.

From 1995 to 2002, the greater part of his research time was devoted to the production of two major reference books. The Blackwell Companion to Social Work was first published in 1997. A radically revised and expanded Second Edition of the Companion, containing 23 new chapters, was published in April 2002. A linked volume, The Blackwell Encyclopaedia of Social Work, incorporating 450 entries by 250 authors, was published in July 2000. The two books together provide a uniquely wide-ranging and up-to-date portrait of social work in the United Kingdom and Ireland in the first decade of the 21st century.

The third edition of The Blackwell Companion to Social Work, with twelve new chapters, was published in January 2008.

In 2007, Martin Davies brought together the fruits of his career as a research teacher and practitioner when he published Doing a Successful Research Project. The book incorporated research material provided by UEA undergraduates doing the PSS degree.

Professor Martin Davies was appointed to the University in 1975. He graduated from the University of Liverpool in Social Science in 1959, and was awarded a doctorate in 1971 at Bedford College in the University of London for a thesis on the situational context of criminal behaviour and offender supervision.

He came to UEA after a distinguished research career in the Home Office and at Manchester University where he taught criminology, research methods and research applications. He was the founding Director of the Graduate Programme in Social Work at UEA, and is the author of more than a hundred books and scholarly papers. His text, The Essential Social Worker, now in its third edition, was based on the UEA course on social work in society, which he taught for twenty years.

His most recent work has involved an exploration of the links between social work’s ‘knowledge foundations’ – policy, law, theory, research and practice. The project is continuing but has already resulted in two edited volumes (2012). 

Professor Davies was appointed Emeritus Professor at the University's Congregation in 2002.  

From 2002 to 2005, Martin Davies was employed as a research administrator with the Norwich NHS Primary Care Trust.  From 2003 to 2008, he served on the Norfolk and Waveney NHS Research Governance Committee with special responsibility for health and social care.  He is currently Chairman of Brundall Parish Council.