Martha Davis papers

Martha Davis (b. July 15, 1942), Ph.D., C.M.A, is a psychologist and certified movement analyst (by the Bartenieff/Laban Institute of Movement Studies) who has published articles and books on nonverbal communication research. She apprenticed in movement observation and dance therapy with Irmgard Bartenieff (February 24, 1900–August 27, 1981), and in 1965, together with Bartenieff and Forrestine Paulay, founded the training program that would become the Laban Movement Analysis Certificate Program. She received her doctorate in clinical psychology from Yeshiva University in 1973. From 1962 through 1985, she conducted research on movement and psychodiagnosis, and nonverbal patterns of therapist/patient interaction first at Albert Einstein College of Medicine Psychiatric Day Hospital, followed by Bronx Psychiatric Hospital, Roosevelt Hospital, Psychiatric Institute at Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center, and Hahnemann Hospital in Philadelphia.

In the mid–1980s, she was on the faculty of New York University’s Tisch School Department of Performance Studies where she did studies of movement patterns in presidential debates and speeches. During the 1990s, she led a study of behavioral cues to stress and deception in videotapes of criminal confessions at John Jay College of Justice, City University of New York. Davis has taught courses in nonverbal communication research and the Movement Psychodiagnostic Inventory that she developed in dance/movement therapy programs from Hunter College in 1973 until recently at the National Centre for Dance Therapy in Montreal. After her retirement from research, she became involved in the movement to reform the American Psychological Association’s policy supporting psychologists’ involvement in detainee interrogations.