Nationality New Zealander Role Sociologist | Name Peter Davis Fields Sociology | |
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People also search for Helen Clark, George Clark, Margaret McMurray | ||
Peter Byard Davis (born 25 April 1947) is a New Zealand sociologist, professor, and the husband of former New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark.
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Early life
Davis was born in Milford on Sea, Hampshire, England, on 25 April 1947, and spent his childhood in Tanzania, where his father worked for a mining company. His father was born in China and his mother in India, but a great-great-grandfather had grown up in New Zealand. Davis gained a master's degree in sociology and statistics at the London School of Economics. He moved to New Zealand in 1970 to work at the University of Canterbury and completed a PhD at the University of Auckland. He became a naturalised New Zealander in 1972.
Personal life
He met Clark—then a political-science lecturer at Auckland—in 1977 and they married shortly after she first won election to Parliament in the 1981 general election.
Career
Davis specialises in medical sociology, and he currently works as the Director of the COMPASS (Centre of Methods and Policy Application in the Social Sciences) Research Centre and has cross-appointments in the Department of Statistics and in the School of Population Health, all at the University of Auckland. Previously he served as Professor of Public Health at the University of Otago's Christchurch School of Medicine.
He has previously served on the Auckland Area Health Board, and was a representative in 1989 when his wife (Health Minister at the time) suspended that body. Davis has achieved international recognition in his field, having worked as a consultant for the World Health Organization.