JESSE BERING is a reader in the School of History and Anthropology and Director of the Institute of Cognition and Culture at Queen's University, Belfast. His postgraduate studies focused on the psychological differences between human beings and chimpanzees, and this early exposure to comparative psychology, combined with his PhD in developmental psychology, led to his work studying how the evolved human mind plays a part in religious thinking. He is the author of numerous scientific articles on topics ranging from the afterlife to university students' conceptions of destiny. His popular writings have appeared in American Scientist, Scientific American and New Statesman, and he has had several essays published in John Brockman's Edge-derived books. He also writes a regular column called "Bering in Mind" for Scientific American magazine. An American by birth, he currently lives in a small village in Northern Ireland. His first book Under God's Skin is forthcoming from W.W. Norton in Spring, 2010.

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