Category : Author Biographies

Aurite Werman is a Financial Analyst in Banking and Supervision at the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve. Prior to joining the Federal Reserve, she was a Research Assistant in the Economic Studies program of the Brookings Institution. Aurite received her Master of Public Policy degree from the University of Maryland, where she specialized in International Economic Policy, in 2014. The research that she conducted for the history of well-being project was completed during her graduate work with Dr. Carol Graham in the Global Economy program of the Brookings Institution. Prior to joining Brookings, Aurite worked in the International Affairs office of the U.S. Treasury, for the city of Boston, and at the Stern Business School at NYU. She holds an undergraduate degree from Brandeis University in Economics and French. E-mail: aurwerman@gmail.com

Daniel (Dan) Weijers completed a PhD and postdoctoral work in philosophy at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. Dan is an assistant professor in the philosophy department at California State University Sacramento and a founding co-editor of the International Journal of Wellbeing. He researches interdisciplinary happiness studies, normative ethics, and the ethics of new technologies. Recent publications include Aversion to happiness across cultures (with Mohsen Joshanloo) in the Journal of Happiness Studies; The science of happiness for policymakers (with Aaron Jarden) in the Journal of Social Research and Policy; and Nozick’s experience machine is dead, long live the experience machine! in Philosophical Psychology. E-mail: danweijers@gmail.com

Habib Tiliouine is Professor of Social Sciences and founder of the Laboratory of Educational Processes and Social Context (Labo-PECS) of the University of Oran 2 in Algeria. His expertise and publications include quality of life in Islamic countries, well-being research, child development and education, education reform and management, and training and distance learning. He has collaborated with UNICEF and many international research institutions and groups. He publishes in English, Arabic, and French and 28 years of experience in university undergraduate and postgraduate teaching and research. In 2015, he received the Research Fellow Award from the International Society for Quality of Life Studies (ISQUOLS) for his contributions to quality-of-life research. E-mail: htiliouine@yahoo.fr

Frederick M. Smith is Professor of Sanskrit and Classical Indian Religions, Departments of Religious Studies and Asian and Slavic Languages and Literature, University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA. He received his PhD from the University of Pennsylvania in 1984. His work includes studies of texts and performances of Vedic sacrificial ritual from antiquity to the present; studies of religious experience in India, with a primary focus on the history and phenomenology of deity and spirit possession; the writings of Vallabhācārya, the founder of the sect of Krishna devotion called Puṣṭi Mārga (Path of Grace) in the early 16th century, and his successors; and India’s great epic, the Mahābhārata. He is currently completing a book-length translation of part of the Mahābhārata; is under contract to write a general book on the Vedas (with George Thompson). He teaches all levels of Sanskrit, Indian (and other South Asian) religion, comparative religion, and ritual studies. He has lived and studied in India for 17 years and has traveled widely in Tibet and China. E-mail: frederick-smith@uiowa.edu

Joseph Sirgy is a management psychologist (PhD, University of Massachusetts, 1979), Professor of Marketing, and Virginia Real Estate Research Fellow at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech). He has published extensively in the areas of marketing, business ethics, and quality of life (QOL). He is the author/editor of many books related to quality-of-life and well-being research. In 1998, he received the Distinguished Fellow Award from ISQOLS. In 2003, ISQOLS honored him as the Distinguished QOL Researcher for research excellence and a record of lifetime achievement in QOL research. In 2012 he was awarded the EuroMed Management Research Award for outstanding achievements and groundbreaking contributions to well-being and quality-of-life research. E-Mail: Sirgy@vt.edu.

Vijay Kumar Shrotryia, PhD, Professor of HR, Department of Commerce, Delhi School of Economics, University of Delhi, India. He was Professor and Head, Department of Commerce, School of Economics, Management, and Information Sciences, North-Eastern Hill University, Shillong—Meghalaya, India. He was a faculty member at Bhutan’s premier educational institution, Sherubtse College, for 9 years; he taught commerce and conducted survey research on the quality of life in Eastern Bhutan. He has done follow-up studies for the last 15 years. He received the Young Researcher Award from the Indian Accounting Association and is a fellow of the Indian Commerce Association. He has published more than 40 research papers and articles. His research interests include happiness and well-being, satisfaction, and organizational strategies. He is on the editorial board of several journals and a referee for others. He has recently written about organizational happiness—a winning strategy for sustainability; Culture, gross national happiness, and disasters: strategies for preparedness and management of disasters in Bhutan; Reconfiguring priorities—GDP vs human well-being; and Culture, industrialization and multiple domains of employees’ job satisfaction: A case for HR strategy redesign in India. He is currently working on developing the constituents of organizational happiness. E-mail: vkshro@gmail.com

Audrey Nathalie Selian holds a PhD in Technology Policy and Development Studies from The Fletcher School; degrees from The London School of Economics and Wellesley College. In 2003–2004, she was a doctoral fellow at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. She has been active in the impact investing sector since 2006 and works for an investment advisory called Rianta Capital Zurich, with an advisory role at Halloran Philanthropies. Her concentration in these roles has been on the development of an impact investment portfolio (through an initiative called “Artha”) focused on high-impact social enterprises at the “base of the pyramid” in India. Since 2000, Audrey has worked as a consultant/subcontractor for both the International Telecommunication Union at the United Nations and USAID, in areas ranging from e-government research and analysis, to trends in telecoms, national/local innovation systems, ICTs and human rights, to the evolution of 3G mobile standards. Audrey has a background in management consulting from PricewaterhouseCoopers. Her entrepreneurial experience includes several years spent in business development at an NSF-funded startup called Wireless Grids, as well as the launch of a tech startup called Artha Networks Inc., focused on the creation of network architecture designed for shared due diligence and transaction cost management between investors. She currently serves as a trustee for several nonprofit organizations. E-mail: audreynathalie@gmail.com

Mariano Rojas holds a PhD in economics from The Ohio State University, is professor of economics at the Latin American Faculty of Social Science-Mexico City and at the Universidad Popular Autónoma del Estado de Puebla, Mexico. He is a member of Mexico’s National Research System. He has published more than 90 papers and book chapters. He acts a coordinator of the initiative “Measuring the Progress of Societies: A Perspective from Mexico.” He is President Elect of the International Society for Quality-of-Life Studies. His main research areas are subjective well-being, conceptions of progress, happiness, quality of life, and economic development. E-mail: mariano.rojas.h@gmail.com

Benjamin Roberts is Senior Research Manager at the Human Sciences Research Council’s Democracy, Governance and Service Delivery program and coordinator of the South African Social Attitudes Survey (SASAS), Durban, South Africa. He helped develop the SASAS series in 2002 with the assistance of the late Prof. Roger Jowell and has coordinated each annual round of surveying since its inception in 2003. His research interests and areas of expertise include attitudinal measurement and social change, subjective well-being and quality of life, poverty and inequality, and social cohesion. Recent publications include Roberts, Gordon, Møller, & Struwig (2015), Shadow of the Sun: The distribution of wellbeing in sub-Saharan Africa. In Glatzer et al. (Eds.), The Global Handbook of Quality of Life. Dordrecht, NL: Springer; and Roberts (2014), Beliefs about inequality and redress preferences in South Africa, Social Indicators Research, 118, 1167–1190. E-mail: broberts@hsrc.ac.za