[1] She received her PhD from the University of Chicago in 1972, writing her dissertation on performative verbs.
[2][3] After completing her PhD, Davison started her teaching career at The State University of New York at Stony Brook.
The majority of her academic career was spent at the University of Iowa where she held a faculty position in the Department of Linguistics from 1988 until she retired in 2016.
[4] Davison's primary areas of study included syntax and semantics, in particular of Hindi-Urdu and other South Asian languages.
[4] Davison spent 1989–1990 at Cornell University with a National Science Foundation Visiting Professorship for Women.