Mr Davy aims to shed more light on the miners who sought gold after Tasmanian-born prospector Gabriel Read, a veteran of the Californian and Victoria gold fields, discovered the precious metal in Gabriel's Gully, Central Otago, in May 1861.
Mr Davy is undertaking the research for a PhD through the University of Otago history and art history department, under the supervision of Prof Angela McCarthy, a professor of Scottish and Irish studies.
He has been studying historical materials relating to the Otago gold rush, and held at the Otago Settlers Museum, and would like to hear from families who have inherited letters, diaries or other historical documents involving the Otago gold rushes.
He can be contacted via Internet at danjdavy@hotmail.com or through the history department.
Mr Davy, who hails from Washington DC, in the US, plans to write academic articles about the Otago gold rushes.
After he completes his PhD, he hopes to write a book examining aspects of the Otago gold rushes as part of a wider global history of gold rushes, including in Canada, the United States and Australia.
"I guess this is the way in which I hope to put Otago on the world map," he said.
Increasing international awareness of Otago's role in the world's 19th-century gold rushes would not only benefit Otago but also meant "more accurate history".
"It's a simple fact that the gold rush didn't stop in California and it didn't stop in Victoria."
Although the main initial Otago gold rush was over in only a few years, it proved greatly influential for the young Otago settlement, significantly increasing its wealth, plugging it into further international merchant networks and greatly increasing the province's international publicity, including greater coverage in the US press.
Because gold miners, whether in North America or Australia, were often a multinational group, from regions as diverse as the Italian Piedmont and China's Guangdong province, the Otago gold rushes "not only brought revenue and manpower into the colony, but also helped to form an ethnically pluralistic culture in Otago".
Not much of a history of the "global gold rushes" seemed to exist.
The work of US scholars had focused mainly on North American gold rushes, offering little detailed coverage of the Otago events.
A map in one American book had, in fact, named Dunedin as "Otago".
The respective gold rushes had been "mythologised" in the national histories of various countries involved, with gold miners often seen as "the perfect example of rugged independence and perseverance gained through privation on the frontier".
Unfortunately, this approach often led to "tunnel vision" in which comparisons with gold rushes elsewhere tended to be overlooked.
The Californian gold rushes began in the late 1840s, with the rush to Victoria, in Australia, starting in 1851, and many miners later crossing the Tasman to Otago.
Sean Brosnahan, a historian and curator at the museum, welcomes Mr Davy's research.
The Otago gold rushes of the early 1860s had greatly increased Otago's population, from about 12,000 to more than 30,000 at their peak, but more research was needed on the early miners, he said.
