Editors' Introduction

This book is, on one level, an unexpected and belated consequence of the COVID-19 pandemic, emerging from a new online community that began during the 2020 winter lockdown with a series of Zoom conversations between Alison Skipper and Carol Gray. This led to the launch of Veterinary Humanities UK, an inclusive virtual network that welcomes anyone interested in applying the humanities to the veterinary sector. By the end of 2021, a thriving community had developed, comprising well over a hundred veterinary professionals and students, humanities and social science academics and other people who saw the value of bringing these two worlds together. We had organised a series of online networking events and topic-specific workshops, leading to our first group publication in the Vet Record , a high-profile journal in the veterinary field. And we had also been asked to submit a proposal for this book, which Alison, Carol and Ruth Serlin co-edited. It will, we hope, serve as a preliminary exploration of the possibilities that veterinary humanities can offer, providing a platform for a wide range of authors to share their thoughts, as we will show.