Dr Arran Davis

 Bio

Growing up in Winona, Minnesota, I went on to study Global Studies and Spanish as an undergraduate at South Dakota State University. I graduated summa cume laude, with my Honor’s Thesis focusing on the humanitarian and economic benefits of immigration liberalization in the United States. Movement and exercise have always been part of my identity, and I spent four years as a javelin thrower on the track and field team at South Dakota State University; I was named an NCAA Division I Track & Field Academic All-American my senior year.

My time as an undergraduate focused my interests on social connection and health, and I moved to the University of Oxford for an MSc in Cognitive and Evolutionary Anthropology, graduating with distinction and winning the Dr. Nicola Knight Dissertation Prize in Quantitative Methods. I was awarded a Clarendon Scholarship to stay at Oxford as a doctoral student. My DPhil in Anthropology focused on the health benefits of sociality and movement, and I completed my studies in 2019. Throughout my time in Oxford, I continued competing in the javelin throw as a student athlete, finishing 7th at the British university championships and being awarded a Full Blue for my performances (the highest honour granted to individual sportspeople at the University of Oxford).

Interests

My research focuses on public health, sociology and evolution.

My journey as a student-athlete sparked my deep interest in the connections between social interaction, physical activity, and public health. Broadly, my research uses evolutionary theory to explore these connections and to better understand the human experience. I employ methods from the psychological, computer, and social network sciences to examine how social relationships affect human behaviour, health, and well-being.

My research has included studies that look at the effects of social environments on physical exercise. Observational, experimental, and survey-based data collected in these studies suggest that feelings of social inclusion and support can reduce perceptions of fatigue, increase feelings of energy, and enhance outputs during physical exercise. The evolutionary perspective we use to interpret these findings sees humans as a socially interdependent species; when our social environments signal safety and support, our bodies can ease the defensive, protective brakes of stress and fatigue.

I am currently working with Professor Emma Cohen as a Postdoctoral Researcher on a James S. McDonnell Foundation funded project that investigates how social environments influence perceptions of fatigue and physical activity levels. This research has employed a mix of experimental and ‘big data’ methods to test our hypotheses. To give an example of our work, we recently worked with the European Social Survey (around 25,000 responses from 20 countries) to examine how a defensive symptom cluster, characterized by pain, fatigue, and low mood, varies according to individuals’ social connections and socioeconomic status. We found that they symptom cluster was more prevalent in lonely individuals, and individuals on low incomes, and that associations were particularly strong for individuals who were both lonely and experiencing poverty. We also found that people living on low incomes were especially at risk for feeling lonely. These findings highlight the important connections between human sociality, economic inequality, and health, and will form the basis for my future research projects.
 

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