Josephine "Jo" Grant is a fictional character played by Katy Manning in the long-running British science fiction television series Doctor Who. A junior civilian operative for UNIT (United Nations Intelligence Taskforce, later retitled: UNified Intelligence Taskforce for the new series)), an international organisation that defends the Earth from alien threats, she was a companion of the Third Doctor and a regular in the programme from 1971 to 1973, and the longest-serving female companion during the Third Doctor's tenure. For his first series, producer Barry Letts had primarily worked on stories inherited from the previous production team.

When it came to assessing his and script editor Terrance Dicks' approach to the next series, they identified a need to replace the Doctor's assistant, for the purposes of exposition and audience identification. Previous companion Liz Shaw had been conceived of as a brilliant scientist, and so could discuss matters with the Doctor on an equal footing; the replacement would be younger and more naive, someone who could ask, "Doctor, what's all this about?" Along with the Brigadier's new second in command, Captain Mike Yates, the character of Jo Grant was inspired by the male-female companion pairing of Jamie McCrimmon and Victoria Waterfield, whom Letts had previously directed, with the intention of a possible romantic subplot for the two. Letts and Dicks also intended that Jo Grant would be cast so as to go beyond the stereotype of a "pretty doll...who can just stand there and scream." They settled on young actress Katy Manning, whose personality had impressed in an otherwise shambolic audition.

Like previous companions, Manning's character was clothed in contemporaneous fashions and attitudes, providing useful reference points for the audience of a science fiction series which couldn't incorporate events of the day. And similar to Pertwee's Doctor, Jo Grant was an "action-style" character, with the actress performing some of her own stunts — understandably so, given that her diminutive stature could not easily be doubled by a male stunt performer — though it is debatable whether the character fully broke any stereotypes.

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