Gay Bradshaw, PhD

Gay Bradshaw holds doctorate degrees in ecology and psychology, a master’s in geophysics, and a bachelors in linguistics and Chinese. From 1992-2002, she was a research mathematician with the USDA Forest Service, holding faculty positions at Oregon State University (Departments of Computer and Electrical Engineering; Environmental Sciences Graduate Program) and at Pacifica Graduate Institute. She was a Fellow at the National Science Foundation National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS), Santa Barbara, California, USA.

Dr. Bradshaw’s diagnosis of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) in free-living Elephants launched the field of trans-species psychology. Her books are How Landscapes Change (Springer-Verlag), Minding the Animal Psyche (Spring 2010), The Elephant Letters: The Story of Billy and Kani (2014), Pulitzer-prize nominated Elephants on the Edge: What Animals Teach Us About Humanity (Yale University Press, 2009), Carnivore Minds: Who these Fearsome Animals Really Are (Yale University Press 2017), and Talking with Bears: Conversations with Charlie Russell (Rocky Mountain Books, 2020).

She is published in academic and popular media including Nature, American Scientist, Developmental Psychology, Journal of Trauma and Dissociation, Ethology, and Psychology Today and featured in the New York Times, Time Magazine, Forbes, NPR, National Geographic, Smithsonian, Stern, Scandinavian television, The Atlantic, Telegraph, The London Times, ABC’s 20/20, several documentary films, and animal protection media such as AAVS, HSUS, and NEAVS, and Best Friends Magazine. Gay is the founder and director of The Kerulos Center for Nonviolence and The Tortoise and the Hare Sanctuary located in Jacksonville, Oregon, USA.