Professor Davies studied Engineering at Cambridge, Transportation and Traffic Planning at Birmingham University, and obtained a PhD in Geography/Statistics at Bristol University. His first academic appointment was at Bristol University. Subsequently, he was a lecturer and then senior lecturer in the department of City and Regional Planning at the University of Wales Institute of Science and Technology (UWIST), now Cardiff University. He was appointed to a Chair in Applied Statistics at Lancaster University in 1989. He was successively director of this five star department, Dean of an Applied Sciences faculty, and then Pro Vice-Chancellor at Lancaster, one of the top ten research-led Universities in the UK.
As an applied statistician, Professor Davies has worked across an unusually wide range of disciplines including Medicine, Metallurgy, and Social Science. He has about one hundred publications in academic journals and books and has worked extensively in industry with companies including Rolls Royce, GEC, and Nuclear Electric. He has also undertaken contract research for government ministries and led the statistical analyses for the Lord Woolf Enquiry into the civil justice system.
Professor Davies’ main responsibility as a Pro Vice-Chancellor at Lancaster University was expanding links with industry and collaborating with government agencies and other educational institutions in the northwest region. He was founding chair of the Northwest Universities Association Research and Strategic Development Committee and a member of the Northwest Science Council ‘core group’ (the group which managed the business for the Science Council established by the Northwest Development Agency).

He was appointed in April 2002 to the Higher Education Funding Council for Wales and subsequently to its Audit and Risk Committee. However, he resigned these positions on his appointment as Vice-Chancellor at Swansea in 2003.
Since returning to Wales, he has served on the Welsh Assembly Government’s Higher Education and Economic Development Task and Finish Group.