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Dr Davis is a Senior Lecturer in History and Head of Department at Queen Mary. She is also Chair of the College's Equal Opportunities Committee.

She was born and brought up in Dublin where she went to Trinity College Dublin to read history. During her first year, she fell in love with the middle ages and became a medievalist with a particular interest in ecclesiastical history.

After her first degree, Davis went on to complete her PhD in late medieval history. During this time, she discovered the value of computers for historical research. This led her to become a founder member of the Association for History and Computing and to her first job, as a research assistant on a project to computerise the Domesday Book at the University of Hull. She has since been actively involved with the development of computing methodologies for historians.

In 1987, she came to Westfield College and was appointed as Lecturer in History, just before the College merged with Queen Mary. Her particular interests in late medieval English history include the medieval clergy, medieval education and medieval women. She has developed courses on medieval women which has attracted a number of students to discover medieval history.

Her book Clergy in London in the Late Middle Ages was accompanied by a CD-ROM with 30,000 records of clergy ordained in the diocese of London from the Black Death to the Reformation. She has also published William Waynflete: Bishop and Educationalist (1993), which is a study of the life of bishop of Winchester (1447-86), one of the great educationalists and patrons of learning of late medieval England .

Dr Davis acted as Chair of the Exhibition Group for the Women at Queen Mary Project, advising College Archive on the content to be included in the Women at Queen Mary Exhibition.