Hilda Kean  Hilda Kean is a British historian who specializes in public and cultural history, and in particular the cultural history of animals. She is former Dean and Director of Public History at Ruskin College, Oxford, and an Honorary Research Fellow there. Kean is a visiting professor of History at the University of Greenwich and an adjunct professor at the Centre for Australian Public History at the University of Technology, Sydney. She is the author of a number of books, including "Animal Rights: Political and Social Change in Britain since 1800" (1998), and "People and their Pasts: Public History Today" (2009, with Paul Ashton).