John H. Shaver

I am a biocultural and evolutionary anthropologist at Baylor University. My academic work to date has focused on understanding religion using theories and methods from human behavioral ecology. This research has involved fieldwork in Fiji, The Gambia, Mauritius, New Zealand, and the United States. My work is interdisciplinary and has been published in anthropology, biology, neuroscience, religion, psychology and general science journals. I am a co-editor of Religion, Brain & Behavior, a journal dedicated to the biological study of religion.

At the moment, most of my time is devoted to two projects. The first project is concerned with how religion impacts fertility and maternal and child health. This project involves a large team of researchers and has collected data from over 10,000 mothers, fathers, and their children in Bangladesh, India, Malawi, the Gambia, and the United States.

An existing body of research suggests that a person’s religious involvement is associated with increased immune function, lower levels of mental illness, and reduced mortality. However, the causal mechanisms through which these relationships occur remain obscure. One reason inference remains weak is due to a lack of longitudinal designs, particularly in non-Western contexts. My second major project takes place in Fiji, a country where I have conducted close to 3 full years of fieldwork. On the island of Ovalau, I am conducting a longitudinal cohort study which includes all adults aged 18-65 (n = 569) living in two villages and two informal settlements around the town of Levuka. Thus far, we've collected data on religion, health, and well-being in 2023, and 2024, and plan to go back to collect in 2025 (and hopefully every year after that).