Gordon Burghardt is a professor in the Department of Psychology and in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. His research program explores evolutionary perspectives of animal behavior. He recently received a Research Fellowship from the Center of Theological Inquiry in Princeton for the Spring 2014 semester. This fellowship will enable him to full-time pursuit of his research project titled, “Ritual, Play, and Animals as Formative Factors in Religious Experience and Moral Action” focused on his research on snake handling religious rituals. The fellowship offers him membership at the Center of Theological Inquiry for the Spring 2014 semester and participation in their Inquiry on Religious Experience & Moral Identity program.