Robert Segal is Professor of Religion at the University of Lancaster. American by birth, he taught widely in the US before coming to Britain 10 years ago, and still is a frequent lecturer there. He is the editor of the journal Religion. He has published numerous articles. His books span the scholarly and the popular and include: Myth: A Very Short Introduction (OUP, 2005), The Blackwell Companion to the Study of Religion (Blackwell, 2005), Religion and the Social Sciences (OUP, 1989), Explaining and Interpreting Religion (Princeton, 1994), Joseph Campbell (Penguin, 1995, being reissued in 2007), and Theorising about Myth (forthcoming). He is the editor of The Gnostic Jung (Princeton 1992), The Allure of Gnosticism (Open Court 1995), The Myth and Ritual Theory (Blackwell), and Hero Myth Reader (Blackwell). He has also written the introduction to In Quest of the Hero.