John Bradshaw

Dr John Bradshaw
B.A.(Oxon.),Ph.D.(Soton.)

Area of research
Companion animal welfare and the science of human-animal interactions

My research interests centre on the behaviour and welfare of domestic cats and dogs, and their relationships with people, although I no longer supervise research students. Before I retired I co-ordinated research programmes on the following: separation disorders in dogs; the welfare of kennelled dogs; the role of olfaction in dogs' location of hidden objects; the psychology of dog-handler interactions; the interpretation of "play" behaviour in dogs and cats; cat domestication; the development of "personality" in cats; the effects of human factors on cat population dynamics.

Impact

My current focus is in making the science of cat and dog welfare accessible to pet owners, through books, articles, radio and television.

My most recent book is THE ANIMALS AMONG US, an exploration of the science and non-science that lies behind the human-animal bond, which was published in the UK in September 2017 and in the USA in October. A precis of its overall theme appeared in The Conversation; Will Self reviewed it in The Guardian and National Geographic reviewed it here. It was selected as Book of the Week by "The Week" magazine (11/11/2017) and as one of the three best animal interest books of 2017 by the Daily Mail.

My previous book, CAT SENSE, was published in 2013 in both the UK and the USA, and featured in the non-fiction best-seller lists in both countries: it has been translated into Dutch, Finnish, German, French (Canadian),Spanish, Italian, Polish, Korean and Japanese, and is being translated into Russian and Turkish. Together with Professor Alan Wilson of the Royal Veterinary College and Dr Sarah Ellis of the University of Lincoln, I appeared in the BBC Horizon TV programmes “The Secret Life of the Cat” and “Little Cat Diaries”, which drew record audiences when first broadcast in the summer of 2013: the same team put together a further three-part series for BBC2 TV "Cat Watch 2014" that aired in October 2014. In the USA, I was featured in a 2014 NBC Dateline documentary "Pets: Their Secret Lives", and in Canada, in "The Lion in Your Living Room", shown in CBC's "The Nature of Things with David Suzuki" series, in January 2015. "Cat Watch 2014" was aired in the USA by Nat Geo Wild in spring 2015 as "The Truth About Cats". Since then I've helped to make a programme for Spiegel TV in Germany, which was shown on ZTL in August 2015, a piece on the popularity of cats on the internet for World's Weirdest Events (BBC2),and a series for ITV "The Story of Cats" which was first broadcast in March 2016.


Biography

I was formerly Reader in Companion Animal Behaviour and University Research Theme Leader for Animal Welfare & Behaviour at the University of Bristol. My academic post prior to that was a Senior Research Fellowship at the University of Southampton (1987-2003),where I founded the Anthrozoology Institute.

Honours received include the BSAS Award for Innovative Developments in Animal Welfare (2014),the BVA Wooldridge Medal (2015) and the RSPCA Award for Outstanding Contributions to Animal Welfare Science (2018).

I was one of the founders of the International Society for Anthrozoology (ISAZ),and formerly acted as Science Chair for the International Association of Human-Animal Interactions Organisations (IAHAIO). I have been a member of the Council of the Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour (ASAB) and served on its Accreditation Committee from 1999-2015. I am currently a member of the Advisory Council of the charity Cats Protection.

Teaching
With Drs Rachel Casey and Sarah Brown, I have revised my textbook "The Behaviour of the Domestic Cat" (2nd edition, CAB International, 2012). Sarah Brown and I have also contributed a chapter to the third edition of "The Domestic Cat: the biology of its behaviour" (Cambridge University Press, 2013),and Dr Nicola Rooney and I have chapters in the second edition of "The Domestic Dog" (Cambridge University Press, 2016) and "Domestic Dog Cognition & Behavior" (Springer, 2014). I have contributed a chapter on cat behaviour to the 3rd edition of Per Jensen's "Ethology of Domestic Animals" (CABI 2017) and, with Dr Elly Hiby, a chapter on dogs to Andy Butterworth's "Animal Welfare Challenges: dilemmas in a changing world" (CABI, 2018).http://University of Bristol, UK