Announcements
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
20 December 2018: My sponsored op-ed was published in the NZ Herald, "How to Future Proof Your Career". See it here.24 November 2018: Presented "Is wellbeing and public policy on the same flight path as positive psychology?" at the 4th Biennial NZ Association of Positive Psychology Conference at the University of Waikato today. I also took part in a plenary panel, chaired a session, and introduced a keynote speaker - it was a busy day!
23 November 2018: I was recently interviewed for "A framework for wellbeing" by Carl Billington for Public Sector, Vol. 41, Iss. 4 (see page 9).
15 November 2018: Philip Morrison and I discuss the implications of the 3rd International Conference on Wellbeing and Public Policy in "Wellbeing and Public Policy: Can New Zealand be a Leading Light for the Wellbeing Approach?", Policy Quarterly, 14(4): 3-12. Link
14 November 2018: Presented on "Student disengagement: Why they say they don’t come" at LearnFest at the University of Waikato today.
14 November 2018: I have official confirmation that i will promoted to Senior Lecturer as of 1 February 2019!
13 November 2018: I was awarded the University of Waikato Early Career Academic Excellence award (thank you very much to my fantastic colleagues for nominating me!) and a University of Waikato Teaching Excellence award.
8 November 2018: I presented the keynote lecture at FASSGRAD at the University of Waikato today on "The experience machine and my postgraduate experience".
26 October 2018: I have accepted an invitation to take part in a panel on wellbeing and public policy at the 6th World Congress on Positive Psychology in Melbourne next year (18-21 July 2019).
18 October 2018: I was awarded a Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences Teaching Excellence award for the second year in a row. Many thanks to my wonderful students for nominating me!
17 October 2018: Presented on "The freebie problem: A pervasive flaw in how we work out what has value" for the Philosophy Seminar Series at the University of Auckland today.
13 October 2018: Presented on "Experience machine experiments: Testing the importance of relationships and individual differences" at the 3rd Australasian Experimental Philosophy Conference at Victoria University of Wellington today.
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
- 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, 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, Philosophical
Frontiers, Philosophical Psychology,
Philosophical Studies, Politics, Philosophy
& Economics, Quality of Life Research,
Res Philosophica, 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 (2016-):
- Weijers, Dan (forthcoming-2019). Teaching well-being or quality of life from a philosophical perspective, in Graciela Tonon (ed.), Teaching Quality of Life in Different Domains. Springer.
- Joshanloo, Mohsen & Weijers, Dan (forthcoming-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.
- 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
- Weijers, Dan & Keyser, Vadim (2016). The Varieties and Dynamics of Moral Repugnance: Prediction Markets and Betting on Matters of Life and Death, The Humanities and Technology Review, 35: 91-129. The free official version.
- Weijers, Dan & Mukherjee, Udayan (2016).
Living Standards, Wellbeing, and Public Policy, The
New Zealand Treasury. The
free official version.
- Joshanloo, Mohsen &
Weijers, Dan (2016). Religiosity Moderates
the Relationship between Income Inequality
and Life Satisfaction across the Globe, Social
Indicators Research, 128(2):
731-750. Last
author version. The
official version
- Weijers, Dan (2016). Prediction Markets as an Alternative to One More Spy, in Jai Galliott & Warren Reed (eds.), Ethics and the Future of Spying: Technology, Intelligence Collection and National Security, Routledge, pp. 80-92. Last author version. Publisher's site.
- Joshanloo, Mohsen & Weijers, Dan (2016). Religiosity Reduces the Negative Influence of Injustice on Subjective Well-being: A Study in 121 Nations, Applied Research in Quality of Life, 11(2): 601-612. Last author version. The official version.
- 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