Emma Davie is Personal Chair in documentary film at ECA and teaches in the Postgraduate Film Dept which specialises in documentary making. Her research area is creative documentary filmmaking practice. Her work explores approaches to narrative structure and form, using collaboration as a tool for experimentation and discussion. Her latest feature documentary "The Oil Machine" ( 2022), explored the complexities of getting off North Sea oil. It has toured extensively provoking debate with over 350 screenings across 6 continents from Texas to Norway to the Houses of Parliament with scientists, economists, engineers,  financiers, activists, oil workers and many other sectors of society.  It has played at many international festivals including IDFA, CPH Dox,  Sheffield International Documentary Festival. Her previous documentary “Becoming Animal” (2018) was co-directed with Swiss-Canadian director and cinematographer Peter Mettler. It proposed a different kind of nature film: one which traces the act of seeing. Travelling to the Gran Teton Park with philosopher David Abram, it examines our shifting relationship to what we call “nature”. It opened at CPH DOX and has been nominated for many international awards including Best Documentary at CPH DOX, Edinburgh Film Festival, Documenta Madrid, Docs Against Gravity . It also played at many other international festivals including IDFA, Jihlava, RIDM, Montreal as well as obtaining cinema release in Switzerland, Canada, UK and Germany.

Her previous feature documentary "I am Breathing" (2012) was co-directed with fiction film maker Morag Mckinnon. It continues her interest in how collaboration informs the process including a central collaboration with Neil Platt, the subject of the film. It played in over 50 countries , provoking many discussions and debates about care for MND patients and has won or been nominated for many awards including three Scotland BAFTAs in 2013. ( Winner of Best Director) . Emma also collaborates as a story editor/ consultant on various films including Syrian filmmaker Diana El Jeroudhi's Republic of Silence ( 2021)   and The Brink of Dreams (2024) by Nada Riyadh and Ayman El Amir, which won the Golden Eye Documentary Prize at the 77th Cannes Film Festival ( 2024).

She worked for broadcasters for 15 years directing a wide range of documentaries including "What Age Can You Start Being An Artist?" ( produced by Mike Lerner)  for Channel 4 (2004, nominated for Grierson Award); "Gigha: Buying Our Island (2002)", a one-hour film for BBC/Scottish Screen; and "Flight", a BBC/Canadian co-production (2000). Emma's background in experimental theatre and performance gave her a background in questioning form and a deep understanding  and belief in collaborative creative practice. She started and ran Clanjamfrie which did large-scale site-specific performances combining film and live performance in venues such as ICA London, Tramway Glasgow. She worked with, amongst others, Robert LePage on "Tectonic Plates " ( 1991) which she acted in at the National Theatre in London ( where it won an Olivier award) and the National Arts Centre, Canada. Emma studied English at Oxford University and theatre in Paris with Phillipe Gaulier. In 2013 she was named as one of Canongate’s Future 40 “multi-disciplinary artists they’re banking on to define the next 4 decades.”

She is a member of the Academy and has been on many international juries including IDFA, Visions du Reel, BAFTA and Docudays Ukraine.