Jared Davidson

An archivist by day and author by night, Jared Davidson is a writer based in Lower Hutt, Aotearoa New Zealand. His research explores the lives of those overlooked by traditional histories – from radicals of the early twentieth century to farmhands and convicts of the nineteenth. Jared has published five books and edited others, while his writing has featured in The Guardian, Overland Literary Journal, History Workshop, Radical Futures, Labour History and The Spinoff. He is currently the Research Librarian Manuscripts at the Alexander Turnbull Library.

Jared’s latest book, Blood and Dirt: Prison Labour and the Making of New Zealand (Bridget Williams Books), won the 2025 WH Oliver Prize for best history book in New Zealand, the 2024 Public Environmental History Prize, the 2024 Bert Roth Award, received an International Labor History Association Honorable Mention Award, was shortlisted for the Upstart Press Award for Best Non-Illustrated Book and longlisted for the 2024 Ockham General Non-Fiction Award.

Jared is also a regular assessor of nonfiction manuscripts and other writing and is available to review work on request.

Jared has almost finished writing his next book, Farms Aflame: The Secret World of Rural Arson.

Farms Aflame is the first book to study the shadowy world of stack burning in Aotearoa – the deliberate arson of harvested crops such as wheat, oats, barley and hay. Drawing on a rich archive of newspapers, inquest files, criminal record books and police records, Jared has found over 500 cases of stack burning across Aotearoa between 1860 and 1900. Out of the haze appears undercover detectives, a motley crew of disgruntled farmhands and farmers, insurance fraud and self-arson, and a secret world of rural social antagonism that has been overlooked by past historians. 

A narrative nonfiction with a dash of true crime, this engaging and original book will provide a glimpse into an illicit past, reshaping our understanding of the countryside and the myths Aotearoa continues to tell about itself. And in doing so, it puts a human face on a crime that was far more common than we thought

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Published by Bridget Williams Books, 1 August 2023

Published by Bridget Williams Books, 2021

Published by Otago University Press, 2019

Published by AK Press, 2013

Published by Rebel Press, 2011

A full list of articles, books and talks (with links)