01/06/2026
Happy times at the recent Warwick-Toronto workshop on the BIG open questions in wellbeing science.
The Hackathon style really worked! No paper presentations, just furiously brainstorming ideas and developing a paper (stay tuned!)
Wellbeing science is entering a new and more interdisciplinary phase. This new era will be characterised by the salience of *applications*. Governments, therapists, schools, self-helpers, care homes, the police, firms, charities, and many other stakeholders now want to apply wellbeing science in their work and lives.
Scientists need to take this seriously, especially the ethical and political dimensions of researching with practical intentions. This isn't about activism or advocacy, it's about recognising:
1) The normative element of your research: if you want real world impact you can't act like you're just a dispassionate scientist
2) That each practical context needs different things from wellbeing science. Treasury, for example, might want new cost-benefit analysis tools, but the science needed for this might be useless to town planners, who want something more multidimensional and systems-oriented.
This has implications for how we conceptualise and measure wellbeing. Challenges like response heterogeneity in life satisfaction research might not be so consequential for the long surveys used in therapy and quality of life assessment. Replacing the acrimony of the last 40 years of wellbeing research with greater pluralism might help us make progress in both science and policy.
Big thank you to co-organisers Sofia Panasiuk (Toronto), Caspar Kaiser (Warwick), Felix Cheung (Toronto), Mark Fabian (Warwick) and especially our Hackathon Dungeon Master Anthony McCanny (Toronto).
