Professor Keith Davids

Professor Keith Davids was appointed Head of School, Human Movement Studies in February 2006. He comes from the University of Otago where he was Dean of the School of Physical Education and Professor of Motor Control.

He was a first-class honours graduate of the University of London and gained a PhD at the University of Leeds. Between 1993 and 1999, he led the Motor Control group at the Department of Exercise and Sport Science at the Manchester Metropolitan University, before being appointed the Department Research Coordinator. At the UK RAE 2001, the Department of Exercise and Sport Science gained a 5* rating, the highest possible award for research excellence

Currently Professor Davids supervises doctoral students from Portugal, England, Germany, Wales, Singapore and New Zealand. He is also co-editor in chief of the International Journal of Sport Psychology and holds editorial board positions for the Journal of Sports Sciences, Infant Behavior and Development and the Psychology of Sport and Exercise. He is an Associate Editor for the Behavioral and Brain Sciences.

Research Interests

Keith Davids is interested in the coordination and control of human movement, and their acquisition, within a constraints-based framework. His theoretical outlook considers human movement systems as belonging to a class of nonlinear dynamical systems. Understanding the functional role of variability, and the relationship between variable, random and deterministic components of stochastic processes in human movement systems, is a dominant theme of his theoretical work.

The broad area of sport and exercise provides the context for his research in human movement of dynamic interceptive actions such as catching, kicking and hitting skills. An additional area of interest concerns how theoretical ideas from ecological psychology and nonlinear dynamics can be integrated into a Nonlinear Pedagogical framework for understanding strategies for organizing and structuring practice and training.

In recent years, Keith Davids’ research and doctoral students have been funded by a number of difference sources including the Economic and Social Research Council (UK), the British Canoe Union, and the government of Saudi Arabia, the Government of Singapore, and University of Otago in New Zealand, Cricket Australia and the Australian Institute of Sport.