Laurel S. Braitman (born February 11, 1978) is an American science historian, writer, and a TED Fellow. She is Writer-in-Residence at the Stanford School of Medicine and a Contributing Writer for Pop Up Magazine. She is also an affiliate artist at the

Headlands Center for the Arts Headlands Center for the Arts hosts an internationally recognized artist-in-residence program, and interdisciplinary public programs. It is situated in a campus of artist-renovated military buildings in the Marin Headlands, in Marin County, Cali ...

. Her work has appeared in The Guardian, The Wall Street Journal, Fast Company, The New Inquiry, Salon, and a variety of other publications. Laurel frequently collaborates with visual artists and musicians like

Black Prairie __NOTOC__ Black Prairie is a six-piece string band from Portland, Oregon. The band formed in early 2007. Their first album, ''Feast of the Hunter's Moon'', was released on April 6, 2010, on the Sugar Hill label. History The band began when The ...

to create concerts for all-animal audiences, such as wolves.

Biography

Braitman was born and raised on a citrus farm near Ventura in southern

California California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...

. She majored in Biology and Writing at

Cornell University Cornell University is a private statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. It is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to teach an ...

, where she was a member of the

Quill and Dagger Quill and Dagger is a senior honor society at Cornell University. It is often recognized as one of the most prominent societies of its type, along with Skull and Bones and Scroll and Key at Yale University. In 1929, ''The New York Times'' stated t ...

society and graduated

summa cum laude Latin honors are a system of Latin phrases used in some colleges and universities to indicate the level of distinction with which an academic degree has been earned. The system is primarily used in the United States. It is also used in some Sou ...

. She worked as an intern in the ''Weekend Edition Saturday'' program at

NPR National Public Radio (NPR, stylized in all lowercase) is an American privately and state funded nonprofit media organization headquartered in Washington, D.C., with its NPR West headquarters in Culver City, California. It differs from other ...

. She received a John S. Hennessey scholarship to pursue graduate studies at the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the ...

, wherein 2013, she received her Ph.D. in the history and anthropology of science. Braitman lives in

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...

, California. She is the author of ''Animal Madness: How Anxious Dogs, Compulsive Parrots, and Elephants in Recovery Help Us Understand Ourselves'', which was published in October 2015. In the book, Braitman shows through a wealth of research that nonhuman animals are startlingly similar to us in how they are affected by mental illness, and in what methods best help them recover.

Bibliography

Books

* ''Animal Madness: How Anxious Dogs, Compulsive Parrots, and Elephants in Recovery Help Us Understand Ourselves'' (2015)

Essays and reporting

References

External links

Interview with Laurel Braitman discussing her book "Animal Madness" on the 7th Avenue Project radio show
* *
TED Talk: Laurel Braitman: Depressed dogs, cats with OCD — what animal madness means for us humans (TEDSalon NY2014)

Laurel Braitman's website

Interview with Laurel Braitman discussing "Animal Madness" on NPR Weekend Edition

Interview with Laurel Braitman on TED Radio Hour

{{DEFAULTSORT:Braitman, Laurel Living people MIT School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences alumni American non-fiction writers Cornell University alumni 1978 births National Geographic people Women science writers TED Fellows 21st-century American women writers People from Ventura County, California Writers from California