BARtalk #5: Happiness, Thurs. March 7th.
Hosted monthly in the Gallery Lounge, this informal speaker series brings you UBC’s leading faculty, students, and alumni speaking to the most important issues of the day. All events feature short remarks from our panel members, and then open up to an informal Q&A session
For our fifth BARtalk, we will be discussing research around happiness. What makes people happy? We’ve got a stacked panel for this one…
Thursday, March 7th, 6:00pm-7:30pm at the Gallery Lounge in the Student Union Building. Tickets by donation at the door with all proceeds going to Shinerama (suggested donation $5).
Panelists and Presentation Title:
Elizabeth Dunn – “Happy Money.”
Elizabeth is the author of Happy Money: The Science of Smarter Spending, co-authored with Mike Norton at Harvard Business School, due in 2013. Dunn is an associate professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of British Columbia, where she conducts original research on self-knowledge and happiness. Her work has been featured in hundreds of media outlets, including The New York Times, The Globe and Mail, and The London Times, and has even been cited in policy papers by David Cameron’s administration in the UK. Two empirical papers were recently published in Science. Dunn has spoken at PopTech!, and was selected as a Chronicle of Higher Education “Rising Star” in academia.
Lara Aknin – “Giving and Happiness Around the World.”
Lara is an Assistant Professor of Psychology at Simon Fraser University and a Fellow of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR). Dr. Aknin’s primary research interests focus upon the antecedents and consequences of happiness and prosocial behaviour. Some of her recent work has examined perceptions of the money and happiness relationship and whether people reap greater happiness from spending money on others (i.e. prosocial spending) than when spending the same amount of money on themselves. Her research has been covered in over 300 media outlets worldwide.
John Helliwell – “World Happiness: Trends, Differences, and Explanations.”
John studies happiness from UBC’s Vancouver School of Economics, through an interdisciplinary Canadian Institute for Advanced Research program on Social Interactiojns, Identity, and Well-being. He is also Professor Emeritus of Economics at the University of British Columbia, a member of the National Statistics Council, Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, and an Officer of the Order of Canada.
