Rate My Professor Clare Davison

Dr. Clare Davison is a privately practising midwife and midwifery academic with affiliations to Murdoch University, particularly through the Ngangk Yira Institute for Change within the School of Nursing and Midwifery. She earned her Doctor of Philosophy from Murdoch University in 2019, with her doctoral thesis titled 'Looking Back and Moving Forward: The History of Midwifery in Western Australia,' which explores the evolution and challenges faced by midwives in the region. Previously, she served as a midwifery lecturer in the School of Nursing and Midwifery at Edith Cowan University. Her career encompasses clinical midwifery practice as an endorsed midwife and academic contributions to midwifery education and research.

Davison's research specializations center on physiological birth processes, including normal labor and birth, assessment of labour progress using alternative ways of knowing, physiological plateaus during childbirth, woman-centred care, and the experiences of privately practising midwives in Western Australia. She investigates midwifery students' confidence in facilitating physiological birth across multiple countries, transformative learning in homebirth settings, and care ethics in midwifery-led models. Key publications include 'Failure to progress or just normal? A constructivist grounded theory of physiological plateaus during childbirth' (2024, Women and Birth), 'Trusting women and birth is central to our midwifery philosophy: The experiences of PPMs in Western Australia' (2023, Women and Birth), 'Physiological plateaus during normal labor and birth: A scoping review of contemporary concepts and definitions' (2022, Women and Birth), 'Looking back moving forward: The history of midwifery in Western Australia' (2021, Women and Birth), 'Pharmacology in Midwifery, 1st Edition' (2024, book), 'Midwifery Students' Definitions of Normal Labor and Birth: A Study From Five Countries' (2026, Birth), and 'A five-country comparison of midwifery students' confidence in facilitating normal labor and birth' (2025). Her work has been published in journals such as Women and Birth, British Journal of Midwifery, and others, contributing to discussions on demedicalizing birth, supporting women's autonomy, and enhancing midwifery practice.