Announcements
The 4th Annual Australasian Experimental
Philosophy Conference was held on 6-7 December
2019 at the University of Waikato, Hamilton, New
Zealand. More details here.
The International
Journal of Wellbeing, an open access interdisciplinary
academic journal on wellbeing, launched in 2011
and shot to prominence. Our articles have been
downloaded over 571,000 times and cited over 2,800 times
in our first six years. An article published in 2012 has
over 500 citations (see it here).
Many of the best wellbeing scholars
are on our editorial board or have published with us.
See more here.
Latest News
15 December 2020: My Academic blog post
(with Justin Sytsma and Joe Ulatowski) on Corpus Methods
in Philosophy was published today. See it here.
8 December 2020: Presented Philosophy as a
Vehicle for Delivering Significant Learning Experiences
(with Nick Munn) at the New Zealand Association of
Philosophers' annual conference in Christchurch. Details
here.
11 November 2020: Today I presented "Tales (or
Confessions) of FutureLearn providers 101" with Clive
Pope and Nicola Daly at LearnFest20: Te Puna Aurei.
details here.
21 September 2020: My paper on
How to Deal with Public
Rejection of New Potentially Life-saving Technologies
will be published in the Routledge book Emerging Technologies and
International Security: Machines, the State and
War. Thanks very much to the editors,
especially Reuben Steff. The book will be available
from 13 December 2020 here.
7 July 2020: I was
interviewed by Sarah Dunning for her series on what
wellbeing researchers do on their Sundays. You can read
it here.
1 July 2020: I have picked up the role of Deputy
Convener of the Academic Planning Committee for the
Division of Arts, Law, Psychology, & Social Sciences
at the University of Waikato.
15 June 2020: I have picked up the role of
Teaching Excellence Awards Coordinator for the Division
of Arts, Law, Psychology, & Social Sciences at the
University of Waikato.
4 June 2020: I reviewed a book proposal for
Cambridge University Press today.
27 May 2020: I signed the publisher's agreement
for my invited chapter in Springer's forthcoming
Festschrift for Ruut Veenhoven. The chapter analyses his
famous "four qualities of life" from a modern
philosophical perspective.
See all the news from
this website in the News Archive. Link
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Summary Academic
Information
Profile:
As of February 2019, I am a permanent Senior
Lecturer (effectively a tenured research and teaching
position) in the Philosophy Programme at the University
of Waikato, in New Zealand. Previously, I was an
Assistant Professor of Philosophy at California State
University, Sacramento, and a Postdoctoral Fellow in
the Philosophy Department at Victoria
University of Wellington. I was born in England,
lived in New Zealand for 20 years, California for 2 years,
and now live near Hamilton, New Zealand with my wife,
Linda, and two sons, Eli and Asher.
Research
Specialties:
- Normative ethics (especially
hedonism, wellbeing, and experimental normative
ethics)
- Applied ethics (especially the ethics of
prediction markets; e.g. PredictIt)
- Interdisciplinary happiness/wellbeing research
(especially wellbeing and public policy, philosophy of
happiness science, and conceptions of happiness)
Other Areas of
Interest:
Political Philosophy, Public Policy, Experimental
Philosophy, Climate Justice, Moral Psychology,
Philosophy of Psychology, Bioethics, Neuroethics,
Philosophy of Science, Philosophy of Economics, Philosophy
of Law, Business Ethics, Cross-Cultural Psychology, Social
Psychology, Behavioral Economics, and The Meaning of Life.
Current Academic Roles:
- Founding co-editor
of the International
Journal
of Wellbeing. Link
- International editorial board member of
Rowman & Littlefield's book series on
"Behavioural Applied Ethics"
- Editorial advisory board member for the
Journal of Philosophy of Emotion
- Editorial review board member for the International Journal
of Technoethics
- Peer reviewer for Anxiety,
Stress, & Coping, Australasian Journal of
Philosophy, Cambridge University Press,
Canadian Journal of Philosophy, Erasmus
Journal of Philosophy and Economics, Ergo,
Ethical Theory and Moral Practice, Ethics
and Social Welfare, International Journal of
Technoethics, International Journal of
Wellbeing, Journal of Cultural Economics,
Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy,
Journal of Social Philosophy, Journal of the
American Philosophical Association, Journal
of Value Inquiry, Methods in
Psychology, Oxford University
Press, Philosophical Frontiers, Philosophical
Psychology, Philosophical Studies, Politics,
Philosophy & Economics, Quality of Life
Research, Res Philosophica, Springer,
Sustainability, and Utilitas.
- University of Waikato's
representative in the New Zealand Association of
Philosophers
- Member of the Expert
Group for the Global Happiness Organization. Link
- Editor of the New
Zealand Association of Philosophers Blog (currently under
development). Link
- Founding director of
the New Zealand Wellbeing Researchers Network
(currently under development). Link
Current Projects/Research:
- Examining what we value about our lives when we
really think about it. An experimental philosophy book
project with Peter Unger
- Deconstructive Replication - an empirical
method for evaluating the fitness for purpose of
thought experiment-audience pairings
- Investigating famous 2-option moral thought
experiments (starting with trolley problems) using
experimental philosophy to assess what differences, if
any, several-option versions of the scenarios make (in
conjunction with Peter Unger and Justin Sytsma)
- Several papers on the deceived businessman and
the experience machine (in defense of hedonism)
- The freebie problem - a structural problem
present in many famous philosophical thought
experiments
- A Cross-cultural and mixed methods
investigation of conceptions of happiness and
well-being with Mohsen Joshanloo
- An empirical paper comparing the happiness of
philosophers to non-philosophers (it doesn't look good
for philosophers!) with Matthew McDonald and Aaron
Jarden
PhD Topic:
My PhD (entitled Hedonism and Happiness in Theory and
Practice) examines various topics at the intersection of
happiness and philosophy. Many chapters are
interdisciplinary, drawing on insights from psychology,
economics and other disciplines.
Selected
Recent and Forthcoming Publications (2017-):
- Weijers, Dan (2021).
Wellbeing and the four qualities of life. In A. C.
Michalos (ed.), The Pope of Happiness:
A Festschrift for Ruut Veenhoven. (pp. xxx-yyy).
Springer. Publisher's site. Last author version.
- Weijers, Dan (2021).
"Chapter 15. “Just wrong,” “disgusting,” “grotesque”:
How to Deal with Public Rejection of New Potentially
Life-saving Technologies", in Steff, R., Soare, S.,
& Burton, J. (eds.), Emerging Technologies and
International Security: Machines, the State and War.
Routledge, pp. 254-272. Publisher's site. Last author version.
- Weijers, Dan (2020).
Teaching well-being/quality of life from a
philosophical perspective, in Graciela Tonon (ed.),
Teaching Quality of Life in Different Domains.
Springer, pp. 15-42. Publisher's site. My chapter.
- Buscicchi, Lorenzo
& Weijers, Dan (2019). The paradox of
happiness: the more you chase it the more elusive
it becomes, in John Watson (ed.), The
Conversation Yearbook 2019: 50 standout articles
from Australia’s top thinkers. Melbourne
University Press, pp. 140-143. Publisher's site.
Republishing of Buscicchi,
Lorenzo & Weijers, Dan (2019). The
Paradox of Happiness: The more you chase it the more
elusive it becomes, The Conversation, 27
May. Link.
- Joshanloo, Mohsen &
Weijers, Dan (2019). Islamic Perspectives on
Wellbeing, in Louise Lambert & Nausheen
Pasha-Zaidi (eds.), Positive Psychology in the
GCC Nations (and beyond): An Introduction to
Research, Policy, and Practice.
Springer, pp. 237-256.
- Joshanloo, Mohsen, Weijers, Dan (2019)
A two-dimensional conceptual framework for
understanding mental well-being. PLoS ONE,
14(3): e0214045. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0214045
- Weijers, Dan & Morrison,
Philip, S. (2018). Wellbeing and Public Policy: Can
New Zealand be a Leading Light for the Wellbeing
Approach?, Policy Quarterly, 14(4): 3-12.
The free official version.
- Weijers, Dan (2018).
Prediction Markets, in Robert W. Kolb (ed.), The
SAGE Encyclopedia of Business Ethics and Society:
2nd edition. Sage, pp. 2716-2718. Last
author version.
- Weijers, Dan &
DiSilvestro, Russell (2017). The Morality of
Experience Machines for Palliative and End of Life Care,
in Mark Silcox (ed.), Experience Machines: The
Philosophy of Virtual Worlds. Rowman &
Littlefield, pp. 183-201. Last
author version. Publisher's
site.
- Weijers, Dan & Jarden, Aaron (2017).
Wellbeing Policy: An Overview, in Mike Slade,
Lindsay Oades & Aaron Jarden (eds.), Wellbeing,
Recovery and Mental Health. Cambridge
University Press, pp. 24-34. (This chapter
reproduces some of the material from Weijers,
Dan & Jarden, Aaron. The Science
of Happiness for Policymakers: An Overview). Last
author version. Publisher's
site.
- Weijers, Dan &
Jarden, Aaron (2017). The International Journal of
Wellbeing: An Open Access Success Story,
in Rajiv Jhangiani & Robert Biswas-Diener
(eds.), Open: The Philosophy and Practices
that are Revolutionizing Education and Science.
Ubiquity Press, pp. 181-194. Last
author version. Free
official version of whole book.
- Michalos, Alex & Weijers, Dan (2017).
Western Historical Traditions of Well-Being, in
Richard Estes and Joseph Sirgy (eds.), The
Pursuit of Human Well-Being: The Untold Global
History, Springer, pp. 31-57. Last
author version. Publisher's
site
- See the full list here
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Contact
Email:
danweijers[at]gmail[dot]com
Phone:
+64 (7) 838-4466
x 8570
Address:
Dan Weijers
Philosophy
Programme,
University of
Waikato,
Gate 1 Knighton Road,
Private Bag 3105,
Hamilton 3240,
New Zealand
Why Contact Me?
Of particular
interest to me is making contact with other wellbeing
researchers. Especially for the following reasons:
- If
you are interested in being a peer reviewer for or
potential contributor to the International
Journal
of Wellbeing
- If
you are an editor of a philosophy or wellbeing-related
project looking for a contributor
- If
you are interested in collaborating on theoretical, interdisciplinary, empirical, or
experimental wellbeing research
- If
you are looking for an expert on happiness and wellbeing
to make a comment about news, policies, or events
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