D. Grace Davie

Originally from the Washington, D.C. area, D. Grace Davie is pursuing her doctoral degree in History at the University of Michigan. She studied African History at Kenyon College and became interested the history of colonial psychiatry. After spending some years exploring a career in medicine, Ms. Davie decided to pursue graduate training in history and focus on the history of science. In formulating her dissertation project, Ms. Davie wanted to attempt to address some of the current concerns about poverty in Africa through an examination of the history of social science approaches to economic and racial inequality in South Africa since the early twentieth century. As a Fulbright scholar and Social Science Research Council grantee, she spent 14 months in South Africa in 2001-2002. While at the Woodrow Wilson Center, Ms. Davie intends to write about the emergence of statistical social surveying in South Africa in the 1940s. This was an approach to measuring poverty that reached its most revolutionary potential in the 1970s, when radical students made links with the burgeoning black trade union movement and the international anti-apartheid movement. Ms. Davie looks forward to conversing with other scholars and meeting members of the policy community.