Oliver Davis

Dr Oliver Davis is Reader in French Studies at Warwick University. He has published the critical introduction Jacques Rancière (Polity, 2010), which appeared in German translation in 2014, as well as the edited volume Rancière Now (Polity, 2013). His research interests include contemporary Continental philosophy and critical theory, queer theory and modern and contemporary French society.

He is currently writing a theoretical and historical book on French policing, prison and security policy in its relation to bureaucracy, which focuses particularly on techniques and traces the development of today’s securitarian consensus back to the early 19th century. A foretaste of this book project appeared as an article on techniques of bureaucratic-carceral governance developed in the model reformatory at Mettray (nr. Tours), in French History (December 2016). His current work is informed by Critical Security Studies approaches, as well as by his earlier work on Rancière’s radical theory of politics.