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
10 December 2019: I presented "Are philosophers happy?" at the New Zealand Association of Philosophers annual conference at the University of Auckland.7 December 2019: I presented "What's driving Parfit's surgery cases?" at the 4th Annual Australasian Experimental Philosophy Conference at the University of Waikato in Hamilton.
6-7 December 2019: I organised and chaired the 4th Annual Australasian Experimental Philosophy Conference at the University of Waikato in Hamilton. Programme.
29 November 2019: I presented on "The Future of Wellbeing at Tertiary Institutions" at the New Zealand Tertiary Recreation Conference in Hamilton today.
25 November 2019: I was awarded a University of Waikato Strategic Investment Fund grant for creating a MOOC on happiness and wellbeing for the FutureLearn platform (NZ$28,000).
19 November 2019: My article on the political paradox of hedonism (with Lorenzo Buscicchi) was republished today in the John Watson edited University of Melbourne Press book, "The Conversation Yearbook 2019: 50 standout articles from Australia’s top thinkers". Link to the book. Link to the article.
6 November 2019: I presented on Significant Learning Experiences in Every Lecture at LearnFest19 in Hamilton. Video
25 September 2019: I gave a talk to University of Waikato Students for Mental Health Week: Quarterlife Crisis, Wellbeing, and the Meaning of Life.
23 September 2019: I gave a guest lecture at Rototuna High School about commonsense morality.
17 September 2019: My family welcomed a former refugee family from Afghanistan. We are sponsoring their settlement. They are wonderful and we are learning a lot!
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 ant 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. ipredict)
- 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 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, 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
- 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 (2017-):
- 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.
- 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.
- 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
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