Ritvo is de Arthur J. Connor-professor in geschiedenis bij MIT (Massachussets Institute of Technology). Ook was zij hoofd van de Faculteit Geschiedenis aan MIT van 1999 tot 2006.

Ritvo heeft boeken gepubliceerd over de opkomst van de milieubeweging in het negentiende-eeuwse Engeland, de (wetenschappelijke) classificatie van dieren en de rol van dieren binnen de Victoriaanse cultuur. Ook verzorgde ze de moderne uitgave van Charles Darwins The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication (1998). Na de publicatie van haar eerste boek, The Animal Estate: The English and other creatures in the Victorian Age (1987) ontving ze in 1990 de Whiting Writers Award.

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Dr. Harriet Ritvo is an American historian who has specialized in British history, with an emphasis on environmental history, the history of biology and natural history, and the history of human-animal relations. She is Arthur J. Conner Professor of History at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). She was head of the faculty of History at MIT from 1999 to 2006.

Ritvo has published books on the emergence of the environmental movement in nineteenth-century Britain, the classification of animals (scientific and otherwise), and the role of animals in Victorian culture; she has also edited Charles Darwin's The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication. She received the Whiting Writers Award in 1990 after the publication of her first book The Animal Estate: The English and other creatures in the Victorian Age (1987).