After carrying out two years of field research on a ‘cargo cult’ in New Britain, Papua New Guinea in the late eighties, Harvey Whitehouse developed a theory of ‘modes of religiosity’ that has been the subject of extensive critical evaluation and testing by anthropologists, historians, archaeologists, and cognitive scientists. In recent years, he has focused his energies on the development of collaborative programmes of research on cognition and culture. He is Head of the School of Anthropology and Museum Ethnography, Head of the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology, Director of the Centre for Anthropology and Mind, CAM (www.icea.ox.ac.uk/cam/) and a Fellow of Magdalen College.