Dr. Tiffany Watt Smith is a cultural historian and author of The Book of Human Emotions. In 2014, she was named a BBC New Generation Thinker, and her TED talk The History of Emotions has over 1.5 million views. She is currently a Wellcome Trust research fellow at the Centre for the History of the Emotions at Queen Mary University of London. In her previous career, she was a theater director.
Books in order of publication:
On Flinching: Theatricality and Scientific Looking from Darwin to Shell Shock – 2014
The Book of Human Emotions: An Encyclopaedia of Feeling from Anger to Wanderlust – 2015
Schadenfreude: The Joy of Another’s Misfortune – 2018
Bad Friend: How Women Revolutionized Modern Friendship – 2025