Ellen Dissanayake (see www.ellendissanayake.com) is an independent scholar, lecturer, and author of three books, What Is Art For? (1988), Homo Aestheticus: Where Art Comes From and Why (1992), translated into Chinese and Korean, and Art and Intimacy: How the Arts Began (2000). Combining her interest in the arts with evolutionary biology, and using insights drawn from fifteen years of living and working in non-Western countries (Sri Lanka, Papua New Guinea, India, and Nigeria), she has developed a unique perspective that considers music and other arts to be normal, natural, and necessary components of human nature. She has received grants from the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation and the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland and has held Distinguished Visiting Professorships at Ball State University in Indiana, the University of Alberta, Edmonton, and the University of Western Australia, Perth. Additionally, she has taught at the National Arts School in Papua New Guinea, the University of Peradeniya in Sri Lanka, Sarah Lawrence College, and the New School for Social Research in New York City. A native of Washington State, USA, she currently resides in Seattle where she is Affiliate Professor in the School of Music at the University of Washington.