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Davis Harte
Davis Harte
Director of the Design for Human Health

J. Davis Harte ("Davis") is Director of the Design for Human Health master's program at the BAC. Davis is also an advocate, practitioner, and speaker who bridges trauma-informed spaces, children's places, and birth environment design with brain, neuroscientific and environmental psychological knowledge. She teaches Environmental Psychology, Advanced Theories in Design for Wellbeing, and Play and Health in Designed Environments. She centers equitable representation and social justice for the global majority in her design work and scholarship. She co-leads the Global Birth Environment Design Network (GBEDN) with Doreen Balabanoff, PhD and Nicoletta Setola, PhD. She is most proud of the work she did as the environmental designer for The ABC House, an abuse-intervention center adaptive re-use project located in Albany, Oregon.

Davis holds a PhD in Health from the University of Technology Sydney, where she produced "The Childbirth Supporter Study': Video-ethnographic examination of the physical birth unit environment". She has multiple peer-reviewed publications and chapters on this and other topics. Her Master's degree in Design for Human Environments (interiors focus) from Oregon State University investigated preschool children's attentional behaviors, based on the randomized presence of houseplants. Her primary research and theoretical interests are systems theory, spatial justice, play, attention restoration theory, resilience, salutogenic and therapeutic design, symbolic interactionism, neuroscience, and evidence-based design.