John Davis, executive director of the David and Barbara Pryor Center for Arkansas Oral and Visual History
The University of Arkansas announced that John Davis has been named executive director of the David and Barbara Pryor Center for Arkansas Oral and Visual History in the Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences.
Davis follows William Schwab, who retired last year after leading the center since 2019.
Davis comes to the U of A from the University of Arkansas at Monticello, where he was an associate professor of political science and director of governmental relations, a role in which he coordinated the university’s legislative initiatives and was an institutional liaison to state officials.
Davis also served as UA Monticello’s interim director of advancement from 2017 to 2018, during which time he introduced an annual campaign, added several endowments, developed the UAM Student Success Fund and recorded a 25% overall increase in gifts from the previous fiscal year, the U of A said in a news release.
At the U of A, Davis has joined the college’s Department of Political Science as a teaching associate professor.
“While we are so grateful to Bill for his years of amazing service, we could not have found a more perfect new executive director than John,” Kathryn Sloan, interim dean of Fulbright College, said in the release. “I know he will be an excellent addition to our college’s leadership team, and his incredible vision and experience will successfully lead our Pryor Center into its next chapter.”
Davis said he plans to build on the Pryor Center’s ongoing work to foster more collaboration and strengthen its ties with faculty and students. He also wants to broaden the center’s scope to Arkansans across the state.
“The Pryor Center is in a unique and highly important position to remind Arkansans of the common ties we all share,” he said. “By lifting diverse voices from within our state, we have the potential to heal division, to enlighten, to inform and to inspire.”
Davis earned a bachelor’s and master’s in political science from the U of A and a Ph.D. from the University of Missouri.
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