Project Leader
Dan Haybron is Professor of Philosophy at Saint Louis University. He received his Ph.D. in philosophy at Rutgers University. His research focuses on ethics and the philosophy of psychology, with an emphasis on well-being and its psychology. He has published numerous articles in these areas. He is the author of The Pursuit of Unhappiness: The Elusive Psychology of Well-Being (Oxford University Press) and, most recently, Happiness: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press).
Postdoctoral Fellow
Richard Kim received his Ph.D. and M.A. in philosophy from the University of Notre Dame and his B.A. in philosophy from UCLA. His main areas of research are moral philosophy, East Asian philosophy, and comparative philosophy. His current research seeks to develop an account of well-being that makes sense of flourishing during both the earlier and later stages of human lives, as well as the connections between friendship and well-being. Expanding on his earlier research in East Asian and comparative philosophy as a member of the Center for East Asian and Comparative Philosophy (City University of Hong Kong), he is also working on a book project titled, Happiness, Virtue, and Community: A Confucian Account of Well-Being, which develops a Confucian account of human flourishing that draws upon contemporary philosophy and empirical psychology.
Project Manager
Graduate Assistants
Jason Chen is a graduate student in philosophy at Saint Louis University. He received his BA in politics from UC Santa Cruz and his MA in political philosophy from the University of York. His main interests include the meaning, the measurement, and the political relevance of well-being. He is specifically interested in the role that self-development plays in achieving a full human life. Other interests include social justice, the limits of liberalism, as well as the philosophy of education. He expects to complete his PhD in 2018.
Dane Muckler is a Ph.D. candidate at Saint Louis University. He received his MA from University of Missouri-St. Louis. His main interests are in the relationship between health and well-being. His dissertation sorts out the role of values in the concepts of health and disease. He is also interested in the measurement of quality of life in healthcare contexts. He expects to complete his Ph.D. in 2018.
Alexandra Romanyshyn is a graduate student in philosophy at Saint Louis University. She received her BA in philosophy and literature from DeSales University, and her MA in philosophy at the Catholic University of Leuven. Her present research focuses on ethics from the perspective of ancient or medieval philosophy. She expects to complete her PhD in 2021.
Graduate Affiliates
Matthew Shea is a Ph.D. candidate in philosophy at Saint Louis University. He received a B.A. in philosophy from Boston College in 2009. His primary areas of interest are ethics and philosophy of religion. Currently, he is writing a dissertation on well-being and moral theory, which develops a new approach to perfectionist accounts of human flourishing and natural law theories of ethics. He expects to complete his Ph.D. in 2018.
Undergraduate Outreach Coordinator
Denish Jaswal is a rising senior at Saint Louis University, double majoring in Philosophy and Neuroscience. She currently serves as the President of Philosophy Club and Political Round Table, researches Parkinson’s Disease in a Neuroscience lab directed by Dr. Michael Anch, works as a Writing Consultant at SLU, and is a shockingly terrible burrito-roller at Chipotle. She expects to graduate from SLU in 2018 and enter graduate school in Philosophy, specific interests tbd.
