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 1 million times and cited 45 times each on average in our first ten years. See a summary of our first ten years here. You can read our most popular article here. Many of the best wellbeing scholars are on our editorial board or have published with us. See more here.
Latest News
9 April 2021: I accepted an invitation from the National Science Center of Poland to review a major grant application on relationships.8 April 2021: My paper with Nick Munn, "Technology as cause of and solution to the empathy problem", was accepted for a workshop on The Oeuvre of Sherry Turkle, organised by the Committee for Communication and Media Theory of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. The workshop is on May 27, 2021. The paper will be published shortly after the workshop.
31 March 2021: I presented Philosophy of wellbeing (and how it applies to student life) today. It was part of Wellbeing Week at Waikato University.
31 March 2021: My paper with Mohsen Joshanloo and Michael Bond was accepted by Personality and Individual Differences. It's titled: Cultural Religiosity Moderates the Relationship Between Perceived Societal Injustice and Satisfaction with One’s Life.
25 March 2021: I was invited to review a book proposal for Palgrave Macmillan on wellbeing.
25 March 2021: My paper with Nick Munn was accepted for the ICT, society, and human beings 2021 conference, which is part of the Multi conference on computer science and information systems 2021. It will appear in the published proceedings. It's titled: Good friendships improve our lives. But can virtual friendships be good?
31 January 2021: I wrote an editorial with Aaron Jarden celebrating the first ten years of the International Journal of Wellbeing. See it here.
See all the news from this website in the News Archive. Link
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)
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 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, National Science
Center of Poland, Oxford University Press, Palgrave
Macmillan, 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
- Executive committee
member for the New Zealand Association of
Positive Psychology
- 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
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 (2019-):
- Weijers, Dan &
Munn, Nick (forthcoming). Technology as cause of and
solution to the empathy problem. Proceedings of The Oeuvre
of Sherry Turkle Workshop.
- Munn, Nick &
Weijers, Dan (forthcoming). Good friendships improve
our lives. But can virtual friendships be good? Proceedings
of the ICT, society, and human beings 2021
conference.
- Joshanloo, Mohsen,
Weijers, Dan, & Bond, Michael (2021). Cultural
religiosity moderates the relationship between
perceived societal injustice and satisfaction with
one’s life. Personality and Individual Differences,
179, 110891.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2021.110891. Publisher's site. (full access until May 28, 2021)
- Weijers, Dan &
Jarden, Aaron (2021). The International Journal of
Wellbeing: Ten years on and the next ten years. International
Journal of Wellbeing, 11(1), 1-7. https://doi.org/10.5502/ijw.v11i1.1577
- 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.
- Ulatowski, Joe, Weijers, Dan, & Sytsma, Justin (2020). Corpus Methods in Philosophy, The Brains Blog, 15 December 2020. Link
- 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
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
Are there any problems with this
page?
Please let me know if there are!
email: danweijers[at]gmail[dot]com
Please let me know if there are!
email: danweijers[at]gmail[dot]com