IPPA Fellows 2019

Professor Roy F. Baumeister is currently professor of psychology at the University of Queensland, as well as affiliations with Florida State University and University of Bamberg. He grew up in Cleveland, the oldest child of a schoolteacher and an immigrant businessman. He received his Ph.D. in social psychology from Princeton in 1978 and did a postdoctoral fellowship in sociology at the University of California at Berkeley.

He spent over two decades at Case Western Reserve University, where he eventually was the first to hold the Elsie Smith professorship. He has also worked at the University of Texas, the University of Virginia, the Max-Planck-Institute, the VU Free University of Amsterdam, the University of California at Santa Barbara, the Russell Sage Foundation, and Stanford’s Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences.

George A. Bonanno is a professor of clinical psychology at Teachers College, Columbia University, U.S.A. He is responsible for introducing the controversial idea of resilience to the study of loss and trauma. He is known as a pioneering researcher in the field of bereavement and trauma. The New York Times on February 15, 2011, stated that the current science of bereavement has been “driven primarily” by Bonanno. Scientific American summarized a main finding of his work, “The ability to rebound remains the norm throughout adult life.”

Shelly Gable received a BA in Psychology from Muhlenberg College and a Master of Arts in Psychology from the College of William & Mary. She earned her Ph.D. in Social Psychology at the University of Rochester in 2000. She began her career in 2000 as an Assistant Professor at UCLA where she earned tenure and co-founded the Interdisciplinary Relationship Science Program before joining the faculty at UCSB in January 2007. Dr. Gable’s research focuses on motivation, close relationships, and positive emotions. Her work has been funded by the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, and the Positive Psychology Network. She is currently funded by a National Science Foundation CAREER grant for newer investigators. She serves on the editorial board of several journals and received a distinguished teaching award from the Psychology Department at UCLA. In 2005 she received the Early Career Award from the Close Relationships Group of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology; and in 2006 she received the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) from President George W. Bush.

Professor Veronika Huta obtained her Ph.D. in clinical psychology at McGill University. At the University of Ottawa, she teaches graduate and undergraduate statistics and the occasional course on positive psychology. Her research compares different ways of defining and pursuing the good life, e.g., eudaimonia (the pursuit of excellence, virtue, personal growth), and hedonia (the pursuit of pleasure, enjoyment, comfort). She studies these pursuits in relation to personal well-being (most notably meaning, feeling of elevation, and connection with oneself), the well-being of the surrounding world (pro-social, pro-community, and pro-environmental behavior), cognitive and physiological responses, and predictors (e.g., parenting styles, worldviews). She is a founder of the Canadian Positive Psychology Association, serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Happiness Studies, and co-organized the first cross-disciplinary conference on eudaimonia.

Kennon Sheldon received his B.S. in Psychology in 1981, and his PhD in Social and Personality Psychology from the University of California-Davis in 1992, mentored by Positive Psychology’s Bob Emmons. After six years at New York’s University of Rochester, where he absorbed and applied Deci and Ryan’s Self Determination Theory, he joined the faculty at the University of Missouri in Columbia where he’s been a full Professor since 2007.Ken was present at the “birth” of positive psychology–the founding conference in Akumal, Mexico, held in January, 1999, and won the John Templeton Positive Psychology Prize” in 2002 for his contributions to this emerging field of positive psychology. He served as the book review editor for the Journal of Positive Psychology from 2006 to 2009, and remains active in the movement to this day. His primary interests are focused on positive psychology: goals, motivation, and psychological well-being.
Ken has been awarded numerous grants from NIMH, NIAAA, and the John Templeton Foundation, as well as the National Science Foundation and university resources, for his research on positive psychology. Most notably, Ken and eminent psychologist Sonya Lyubomirsky were co-primary investigators on a million dollar NIMH grant investigating factors which sustain or inhibit increases in happiness levels, leading to the formulation of a “sustainable happiness model.” He and Sonya have continued their collaboration long after their first grant ended and have applied for additional funding for ongoing research on the factors which sustain happiness. Ken also serves on the Advisory Board of two happiness-related companies — Hapacus and Livifi.
Ken’s research with Deci and Ryan’s Self Determination Theory has explored the optimal motivations for pursuing personal goals. Other research interests include the relationship of creativity to motivational conflict and style, exploring the nature of cooperative and competitive behavior in social dilemmas, investigating factors that promote personal goal attainment, and examining the effects of goal pursuit and attainment on mental health.
A prolific writer and dedicated researcher, Ken has authored over 150 peer-reviewed empirical research articles, published in the most prestigious scientific journals ( Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, Psychological Review, Psychological Inquiry, American Psychologist, Psychological Science ). He has been associate and consulting editors to Motivation and Emotion, the Journal of Research in Personality, and the Journal of Personality.

Professor Dianne Vella-Brodrick (PhD) holds the Gerry Higgins Chair in Positive Psychology and is Deputy Director and Head of Research at the Centre for Positive Psychology at the Melbourne Graduate School of Education, University of Melbourne. She is the inaugural Director of the Master of Applied Positive Psychology program (2013 – 2015) and is a registered psychologist and a Member of the Australian Psychological Society and College of Health Psychologists. She founded the Positive Psychology Network in Australia and has served as Treasurer and Secretary of the International Positive Psychology Association (IPPA) and is currently on the IPPA Council of Advisors. Dianne has been an inaugural Editor in Chief of the Psychology of Well-Being: Theory, Research and Practice journal (2011-2016) and has Co-Directed the 2008, 2010 and 2014 Australian Positive Psychology and Well-being conferences. She serves on numerous research advisory boards, regularly reviews scientific papers for leading journals and has received around $3 million funding for her research. Dianne’s research interests include the development and evaluation of well-being programs, particularly in the areas of positive education and performance optimization. She specializes in innovative mixed method designs which utilize the latest technology, experience sampling method and biological indices of well-being. Her research has a special focus on young people. She also integrates ethical and professional practice issues in much of her work and is currently the Ethics Chair at the Melbourne Graduate School of Education. Dianne also has extensive experience with scale development and psychometric testing having been involved in the development of numerous well-being measures including the Wuzzup app, MoodPrism and Wellbeing Profiler.

Professor Robert J. Vallerand is Full Professor of Psychology at the Université du Québec à Montréal. He has published 8 books and well over 350 scientific articles and book chapters. His research focuses on motivational processes and especially passion for activities. He has served as President of the Canadian Psychological Association and the International Positive Psychology Association. He served as President of the 2^nd World Congress on Positive Psychology (Philadelphia, 2011). He is a Fellow of more than 15 associations, including the American Psychological Association (and Fellow of 5 APA Divisions), the Association for Psychological Science, and many others. He has received numerous awards, including the Christopher Peterson Gold Medal Award from the International Positive Psychology Association, the William James Award from the American Psychological Association for his 2015 book, The Psychology of Passion with Oxford University Press, and the Sport Science Award from the International Olympic Committee.