John Shaver is Senior Lecturer and Head of the Religion Programme at the University of Otago. He is an evolutionary anthropologist whose work explores the complex relationships between religion, cooperation, and social inequality. He is also particularly interested in understanding cross-cultural and intra-cultural variation in fertility, and the impacts of family size on child development. To explore these issues, he has conducted research in the Czech Republic, Fiji, Mauritius, New Zealand and the United States.