Principal Supervisor: Dr Karen Hiestand, Royal Veterinary College

Co-Supervisor: Professor Heike Bauer, Birkbeck

Project Description

Is animal euthanasia a necessary treatment or a failure of care? The veterinary act of animal euthanasia occupies a complex role both within the profession and for the people faced with decisions about the end-of-life care of their pet. Unlike in human healthcare where the protection and extension of life is taken as a central tenet, animal healthcare accepts premature death as part of a practice focused on the limitation of suffering. Yet the advances in veterinary science over the last three decades have made the decision about when is the right time to euthanize an animal ever more difficult. Popular representations of veterinary practice today often focus explicitly on life-extending treatments even as voices within the profession have begun to raise concern that veterinary advances may be valuing life over suffering (Clutton, 2025).

This project brings together veterinary and cultural perspectives to map changing professional and client attitudes to euthanasia, the varied contexts that inform them, and how they shape companion animal care today.

Aims

• Examine how euthanasia is understood within the UK veterinary profession and its clients
• Generate understanding of how changing attitudes to euthanasia shape end-of-life care for companion animals today

Objectives

• Develop an interdisciplinary approach to study the euthanasia in clinical and cultural context
• Attend to historical shifts in understanding of end-of-life practices over the last thirty years
• Consider how veterinarians manage euthanasia on the nexus between the common veterinary practice, the animal’s best interest and client’s expectations
• Examine clients’ own understanding and experience of the euthanasia
• Draw together these findings to identify how understanding of euthanasia affects animal welfare in veterinary practice today

Methodology

The thesis adopts an interdisciplinary approach pioneered in the emerging field of the veterinary humanities, which argues that dialogue between the humanities and social sciences is crucial to tackling veterinary issues.

1. The cultural-historical analysis will focus on textual and visual sources that might range from newspapers to professional records, charity appeals to TV shows, to identify shifts in popular and critical discourses about companion animal euthanasia.
2. The ethnographic analysis might draw on quantitative and qualitative social research methods to understand how vets and clients construct their realities, the meaning they take from them and how this shapes their decision making in relation to euthanasia.

Subject Areas/Keywords:

Human – animal relationships, animal studies; animal history; animal welfare; animal ethics; veterinary humanities; humanities (History; English; Media Studies); social sciences (Sociology; Ethnography; Anthropology); thanatology

Key References

• Davidson, J. (2024). ‘History of the Veterinary Profession’. Vet Record
• Desmond, J. (2022), ‘Medicine, Value, and Knowledge in the Veterinary Clinic. Frontiers in Veterinary Science.
• Clutton, R. E. (2025). Veterinary Controversies and Ethical Dilemmas.
• Haraway, D. (2008), When Species Meet.
• Skipper, A. et al. (2021). ‘Gold standard care’ is an unhelpful term. Vet Record

Further details about the project may be obtained from:

Principal Supervisor: Dr Karen Hiestand: kahiestand@rvc.ac.uk

Co-Supervisor: Professor Heike Bauer: h.bauer@bbk.ac.uk

Further information about PhDs at RVC is available from:

https://www.rvc.ac.uk/study/postgraduate/phd/studentships/when-should-pets-die

Application forms and details about how to apply are available from:

https://www.rvc.ac.uk/study/postgraduate/phd/studentships/when-should-pets-die

Closing date for applications is:

2nd April 2026