I am a scholar of the history of religions and comparative religion (Ph.D., Princeton Univ.), and have taught at the University of California at Berkeley, Boston University, Barnard College (Columbia University), the University of Vermont, Princeton University, Pacifica Graduate Institute, and the California Institute of Integral Studies. My specialty is the religions of the ancient Mediterranean world, especially the ancient Mystery religions, Gnosticism, ancient cosmology, and early Christianity. I have also taught courses in a variety of more speculative areas such as the evolution of consciousness, archetypal psychology, alchemical symbolism, the metaphysics of cyberspace, and applied deep ecology, and I have been a frequent lecturer at the San Francisco C.G. Jung Institute.

In addition, I'm the creator and webmaster of www.massextinction.net, the web's foremost source of information on the current mass extinction crisis (there is now a consenus among biologists that unless humanity changes its course, one-half of all species of life on Earth will be extinct in 100 years). In connection with my work on the extinction crisis, I am the Project Director of the Species Alliance (www.speciesalliance.org), which recently received a major grant to produce a documentary film and related outreach activities to alert the general public to the urgency of the global extinction crisis.

To listen to a talk I gave at the 2004 Green Festival about the extinction crisis, go to www.well.com/user/davidu/greenfestival.html .

I'm also the co-founder of the Planetwork Project on cyberspace and global change ( www.planetwork.net/background.html ).

My book, "The Origins of the Mithraic Mysteries: Cosmology and Salvation in the Ancient World," was published by Oxford Univ. Press
( www.amazon.com/gp/product/0195067886 ), and I am currently finishing a new book for Oxford. I have also published articles in places ranging from Scientific American to the Journal of Biblical Literature, and my website on the extinction crisis was featured in Natural History Magazine.