Davis, Gloria

Gloria Davis was the first anthropologist hired by the World Bank. She specialized in Southeast Asia, receiving her Ph.D. from Stanford University in 1975 with a dissertation on Parigi: A Social History of the Balinese Movement to Central Sulawesi, 1907-1934. She then taught anthropology for three years at Yale University. In 1978 Davis joined the World Bank's Indonesia Transmigration and Land Settlement Program, where she became part of the team assessing the Bank's support for transmigration projects in Indonesia. This led to the publication of the major report, Indonesia Transmigration Program Review, in 1981. In 1984 Davis became the senior operations office in the agriculture division of the East Asia and Pacific Region. She participated in various missions, often to Indonesia but also to Fiji in 1984. During this period she lead the review of the entire Indonesia transmigration sector, culminating in a major report, Indonesia Transmigration Sector Review, in 1986. Following the general reorganization of the World Bank in 1987, Davis became the chief of the Environment Division of the Asia Technical Department. In 1990 she wrote another major study, Indonesia: Sustainable Development of Forests, Land and Water. She became chief of the Social Policy and Resettlement Division in the Environment Department in 1993 and director of the Social Development Department from 1997 until 2000. Davis retired from the Bank in 2000 but continued to serve as a consultant until 2004. Gloria Davis was born in 1943 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. She died in 2005.