Category : Author Biographies

Robert A. Cummins was appointed Emeritus Professor in 2014, after holding a Personal Chair in Psychology at Deakin University from 1997 to 2013. He holds postgraduate degrees in physiology and psychology from the University of Queensland and the University of Western Australia. Professor Cummins is an international authority on quality-of-life research and a Fellow of the Australian Psychological Society and of the International Society for Quality-of-Life Studies. He is on the editorial board of 15 journals and is an editor of the Journal of Happiness Studies. In 2000, Professor Cummins founded the Australian Centre on Quality of Life as a virtual centre within Deakin University as a resource for students and researchers. Professor Cummins supervises postgraduate students, for which he has received several awards. He has an h-index of 50 and has published over 350 books, book chapters, papers, and reports and is a popular speaker. E-mail: robert.cummins@deakin.edu.au

Isabelle Clark-Decès is Professor, Department of Anthropology, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey. She received her PhD from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1995. Dr. Clark-Decès’ research interests are in South Asia, with a research focus on the Tamils of South India. Her first three books focus on Tamil ritual and the series of conceptual, existential, theoretical issues it opens up: Religion Against the Self: An Ethnography of Tamil Rituals; No One Cries for the Dead: Tamil Dirges, Rowdy Songs, and Graveyard Petitions; and The Encounter Never Ends: a Return to the Field of Tamil Rituals. She has edited a volume of essays that explore recent trends in the anthropological study of India (A Companion to the Anthropology of India). Her recent study of preferential marriages to close kin in Tamil Nadu presents a focused ethnography of a waning marriage system: its past, present, and dwindling future (The Right Spouse: Preferential Marriages in Tamil Nadu). She teaches courses on India, ritual, kinship, anthropological theory, and ethnography and directs the Program in South Asian Studies. E-mail: ideces@princeton.edu

Tanja Capic received her Bachelor of Arts with Distinction from Deakin University in Melbourne in 2012, along with first class Honours in Psychology, in 2014. Her research topic is in the area of subjective well-being (SWB), in particular, SWB set-points within the context of homeostasis theory of SWB. She was awarded a publication write-up scholarship for her thesis and in 2015 submitted her thesis for publication in a scientific journal. Tanja currently works as a Research Assistant on the Australian Unity Wellbeing project at Deakin University. Her role includes maintaining the dataset comprising all Australian Unity Wellbeing Surveys conducted since 2001 and publishing annual reports based on these data. E-mail: tanja.capic@deakin.edu.au.

Shawn Arthur is Assistant Professor, Department for the Study of Religions, Wake Forest University, Winston-Salem, NC. His research interests include religious dietary practices; intersections of religion, culture, and the body; religion and body modifications; method and theory in the study of religions; the interdisciplinary analysis of religion; Chinese medicine; nature-oriented religions; and contemporary paganism and Wicca. Shawn’s first book, Early Daoist Dietary Practices: Examining Ways to Health and Longevity (Lexington Books 2013), focuses on a fifth century Daoist text that contains recipes for achieving immortality. In addition to looking at the religious content and issues present in the text, he also uses a range of scientific, nutritional, medical, and parasitological studies to analyze the text’s physical regimens and their likely outcomes. His current research focuses on contemporary popular religion in China and how lay practices and perspectives can contribute to our understandings of “religion” and how these differ from authoritative traditions and official presentations. E-mail: arthursd@wfu.edu