Dr Martin Davis

Dr Martin Davis is the Digital Map Curator at the Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford. Martin’s academic interests include cartography, Geographic Information Systems (GIS), and the management and curation of both digitised and born-digital map collections. Martin is Co-Convener of the UK Map Curators’ Group and a co-opted Member of Council of the British Cartographic Society. He is a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society (with IBG) and the Higher Education Academy, and is a member of Regent’s Park College, Oxford. Martin holds a PhD in Geography from Canterbury Christ Church University and was the inaugural winner of the Ian Mumford Award for excellence in original cartographic research. He previously served as Reviews Editor of The Cartographic Journal.

Undergraduate

Lectures and practical lab classes on cartography, GIS, and spatial analysis, including within the Prelims foundational course 'Methods in Physical Geography' and Final Honour School option 'Geographic Data Science'. Support for dissertation students using map or GIS-based methods.

Graduate

Martin leads the ‘Mapping People and Places’ module of the MSc Digital Scholarship in the Humanities Division.

• Davis, M. (2024) Revisiting Parsons: a wartime map classification system in the Digital Age. Journal of Map & Geography Libraries, 19(3): 140-159. 
• Davis, M. and Kent, A.J. (2021) An analysis of the global symbology of Soviet military city plans. The Cartographic Journal, 59(4): 315-338.
• Yorke, L., Tate, S. and Davis, M. (2021) New to teaching geography: a practical guide for higher education teaching assistants, teaching fellows and demonstrators. London: RGS-IBG. 
• Davis, M. (2021) A cartographic analysis of Soviet military city plans [Springer Theses]. Cham, Switzerland: Springer Nature.
• Kent, A.J., Davis, M. and Davies, J. (2019) The Soviet mapping of Poland – a brief overview. Miscellanea Geographica, 23(1): 5-15.
• Davis, M. and Kent, A. J. (2018) Identifying metadata on Soviet military maps: an illustrated guide. In: Altić, M., Demhardt, I. and Vervust, S., eds. Dissemination of Cartographic Knowledge. New York: Springer. pp. 301-313.
• Davis, M. and Kent, A. J. (2017) Improving user access to Soviet military mapping: current issues in libraries and collections around the globe. Journal of Map & Geography Libraries, 13(2): 246-260.
• Davis, M. (2017) Mobile Mapping [AND] Global Positioning Systems. In: Kent, A.J. and Vujakovic, P., eds. Routledge Handbook of Mapping and Cartography. London: Routledge.

Selected Conference Papers

• Davis, M. (2024) Digitised and born-digital mapping: challenges and opportunities. In: Where Does Map History Go Now? (ISHMap), Sep 2024, London, UK.
• Davis, M. (2023) Revisiting Parsons: a wartime map classification system in the Digital Age. In: British Cartographic Society Map Curators’ Group Workshop, Sep 2023, Cambridge, UK.
• Davis, M. and Kent A.J. (2023) An overview of the Soviet mapping of South Africa. In: International Cartographic Conference, Aug 2023, Cape Town, South Africa. 
• Davis, M. (2021) Soviet city plans and OpenStreetMap: a comparative analysis. In: International Cartographic Conference, Dec 2021, Florence, Italy.
• Davis, M. (2019) Analysing geographical trends in the application of the symbology of Soviet military city plans. In: Royal Geographical Society (with IBG) Annual International Conference, Aug 2019, London, UK.
• Davis, M. and Kent, A.J. (2019) Analysing the symbology of Soviet military city plans. In: International Cartographic Conference, Jul 2019, Tokyo, Japan.
• Davis, M. (2017) Rethinking cold war cartography: destabilising the ontology of Soviet military city plans. In: International Cartographic Conference, Jul 2017, Washington DC, USA.
• Davis, M. and Kent, A. J. (2016) Improving user access to Soviet military mapping: a guide for map libraries around the globe. In: International Symposium on the History of Cartography, Oct 2016, Dubrovnik, Croatia.