Dr Stephanie Howard-Smith is a lecturer, writer and historian of dog-human relations — and a lifelong dog lover. She completed her PhD on the cultural history of the lapdog in the eighteenth century at Queen Mary University of London. She has lectured in English and History at universities across the United Kingdom.

Stephanie is the author of several academic essays about dogs in 18th- and 19th-century Britain and is an expert on this formative period in the development of the companion animal. Her research has explored, among other things, why 18th-century people couldn’t get enough of porcelain pugs, why women in 19th-century novels treat their lapdogs like children, and how dogs disrupted the domestic environment in Georgian homes.

Stephanie also writes about history for a popular readership and her articles have been published by Slate Magazine, Art UK, Apollo Online, the Wellcome Collection and History Today, among others.

She has been featured as an expert on pet history by The Atlantic, The Guardian and the New York Post, BBC Radio 4’s The World Tonight, and the SKY History series Britain’s Greatest Obsessions. She has been a guest contributor to The Thing About Austen podcast and Tony Robinson’s Cunningcast.

Stephanie is a Research Associate at the University of York’s Centre for Eighteenth Century Studies.