Profile menu

Other affiliations
Biography
Anne Davies is Professor of Law and Public Policy and a Fellow of Brasenose College. She studied at Oxford, completing the BA (winning the Gibbs and Martin Wronker Prizes) and the D.Phil. She was a Prize Fellow at All Souls College from 1995 to 2001, and the Garrick Fellow and Tutor in Law at Brasenose College from 2001 to 2015. From 2015-2020 she was Dean of the Oxford Law Faculty.
Professor Davies is the author of five books and numerous articles in the fields of public law and labour law. In public law, she has a particular interest in government contracts. Her D.Phil. thesis examined the phenomenon of contractualisation in the UK National Health Service from a public law perspective. She developed this research into a book entitled Accountability: A Public Law Analysis of Government by Contract which was published by Oxford University Press in 2001. Her book The Public Law of Government Contracts, a wider examination of public procurement and public/private partnership contracts from a public law perspective, was published by OUP in 2008. She continues to write about government contracts and public service delivery more generally, and chairs the Procurement of Government Outcomes network for the Blavatnik School of Government at Oxford.
In labour law, Professor Davies is the author of three texts: Perspectives on Labour Law, published by Cambridge University Press in the Law in Context series in 2004, with a second edition in 2009, EU Labour Law, published by Elgar in 2012, and Employment Law, published by Pearson in 2015. Her interests in the labour law field are wide-ranging, encompassing international, European and domestic law. Some of her current research projects focus on working time and casual work, and stress at work.
Professor Davies gives lectures in Labour Law and Administrative Law for undergraduates and co-teaches the BCL/M.Jur. course in Human Rights at Work. She is pleased to consider applications from prospective research students in any of her areas of interest.
Professor Davies is an independent member of the Council of the Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service (ACAS), and a member of the Advisory Panel to the Welsh Language Commissioner.
Publications
Recent additions
-
A C L Davies, 'Stress at Work: Individuals or Structures? ' (2021) Industrial Law Journal (forthcoming) Stress is a significant practical problem in modern workplaces. According to the Health and Safety Executive (HSE), more than half of all working days lost to ill health each year are attributed to stress, depression or anxiety. This article offers an overview of the occupational psychology literature on workplace stress, focusing on the job demands–resources or JD-R model, developed by Demerouti et al., and highlighting two important points: first, that stress at work is not just about excessive job ‘demands’ but also about inadequate ‘resources’ to cope with those demands; second, that stress-related ill-health is not just a matter of vulnerability on the part of the individual worker, but is also about the way in which the workplace is organised. The article then draws on these insights to offer a critique of the way in which health and safety law and tort law approach workplace stress, arguing that both bodies of law are overly focused on treating stress as a matter of individual vulnerability. It concludes by drawing out some broader implications of the occupational psychology literature for areas of employment law less obviously related to workplace stress, and for casual or platform working.A C L Davies, 'The “Contracting State” and the Public/Private Divide' in J Varuhas and S Wilson Stark (eds), The Frontiers of Public Law (Hart 2020) A C L Davies, 'Licensing of Employing Entities and Criminalization' in A Bogg, J Collins, M Freedland, J Herring (ed), Criminality at Work (OUP 2020)
All publications
Journal Article (28)
Chapter (25)
Case Note (5)
Edited Book (3)
Book (6)
Research programmes
Research projects
Research Interests
Public Law, Labour Law