Psychologist, professor and writer, Jesse specializes in cognitive science and the evolutionary bases of human behaviour. From God to sex to suicide to the afterlife, he uses humor and science to explore, at the deepest levels, what it means to be—and to think—human.
Photo by Guy Frederick
Jesse is the author of several acclaimed popular science books, and he and his work have been featured on numerous documentaries, television shows and radio programmes, including ‘Through the Wormhole with Morgan Freeman’, ‘Conan’, ‘Chelsea Lately’, ‘Q&A’ (Australia), NPR’s ‘All Things Considered’ and the BBC. He has written for Scientific American, Slate, Guardian, The New York Times, Discover, Chicago Tribune, New Republic, Vice and many others.
Jesse is Professor of Science Communication and Head of the Department of Science Communication at the University of Otago, in Dunedin, New Zealand. He lives on the Otago Peninsula with his partner Juan and their two border terriers, Hanno and Kora.
"I'm not surprised that a book on suicide would be very personal, but I didn’t expect it to be so damn funny. It's also engaging, thoughtful, and sensitive--although Bering is certainly irreverent, there is a real appreciation of how painful and difficult this topic can be. This is a book for scholars and for a general audience, but it is also entirely suitable for people whose lives have been touched by the suicide of someone they loved.”
Paul Bloom, author of Against Empathy
“Like a slightly kinky friend, Perv is sometimes weird, often revelatory, and always enthralling. You’d expect a book about sexual perversions to be at least interesting, but in Jesse Bering’s hands it’s also smart, humorous, and eminently humane.”
Florence Williams, author of Breasts: A Natural and Unnatural History
Top 25 Books of 2011 by the American Library Association, Choice Reviews
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Jesse is Head of the Department of Science Communication at the University of Otago.
