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I'm a Well-being Scientist, Teacher and Therapist, attempting to understand the fundamental workings of lives well-lived. I'm looking for the principles, strategies, skills and experiences that can help us foster profoundly healthy, helpful, and good-hearted lives that are highly-adventurous and rich in creative partnerships.

This has been my vocation for the past 12 years, before which I worked as a volunteer forensic psychologist in Feltham Young Offender Prison. It was here I realised that to better understand the journey of a lifetime, we need to compare what hinders with what helps.

So it is that my study of well-being encompasses such subjects as our in-born need for beautiful relationships; building a passion for life and a rapport with our sub-conscious mind; positively channeling the energy of our painful and pleasurable emotions; how we achieve high-performance and expertise; and living in harmony with new technologies and our natural world.

Having earned my PhD in Psychology from Cambridge University, I felt very privileged in 2001 to begin teaching here as Britain's first lecturer in the emerging fields of 'Positive Psychology & The Science of Well-being', passing on what we know about helping lives to thrive and flourish, and how to make fine progress even in the face of adversity.

For two years, I wrote a weekly column on 'The Science of Happiness' for The Times, and then embarked upon my first book, Learning from Wonderful Lives: lessons from the study of well-being. In this, I try to explain some of what we've discovered so far, writing it for a very general readership so that everyone can benefit from all the principles and strategies, skills and experiences, that seem to help life go better, no matter where we're starting from.

Since our Royal Society conference on 'The Science of Well-being' in 2003, I've been glad to give insight seminars and workshops to a host of leading institutions and businesses who are particularly well placed to pioneer major improvements in the educational and working worlds. And in January 2005, I was delighted of the invitation to become a Fellow of The RSA. Founded in 1754, this is the Royal Society for the encouragement of the Arts, Manufacture and Commerce. The society is an entirely independent charity, and in the course of its history has brought about The Royal College of Art, The Royal College of Music, The Royal Academy, The Great Exhibition, and much more besides. Its motto is 'Inspiring the Future'.

By helping to found the Well-being Institute here at the University of Cambridge in November 2006, I'm hoping our work will do exactly that - act as an inspiring catalyst for profound improvements in our ability to partner-up and live in harmony with the world around us.

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• Nick's first ever book has been published by Cambridge Well-Being Books in August 2006, as Learning from Wonderful Lives: lessons from the study of well-being. This celebration volume is 480 pages, bound in sky blue and dove grey hardback, and retails for £20, available through www.nicksbook.com or telephone 01278-722-888.
• In September 2005, Nick completed a two year, 104 column stint for The Times on 'The Science of Happiness'. (This Saturday magazine had a weekly UK circulation of one million.)
• September 2005 onwards: Nick's Times columns have been syndicated by one of Australia's most widely read newspapers, The Australian, who will run the pieces in their new flagship monthly magazine.
• Nick also wrote a year's worth of monthly columns for Psychologies magazine on the way that good film-stories can be used to guide and heal us in troubled times.
• Before the above: a weekly life-coaching piece for the Financial Times Saturday magazine, The Business. Nick has also written lead articles for most best-selling national publications, from Glamour to The Times Education Supplement.

Nick holds the MA in Creative Writing from the University of East Anglia (1993) taught by Malcolm Bradbury and Rose Tremain, and is a graduate of The National Film & Television School (1994).


Nick's literary agent is Robert Kirby of Peters, Fraser & Dunlop in London, who kindly represents his books and columns to publishers and editors. Please contact www.pfd.co.uk. (Robert Kirby also represents Ricky Gervais, Ewan McGregor, and many others.)


Representative of Nick's range of recent engagements, are the following:

For charities such as Teach First, St. Christopher's Hospice, Wellington College, and the Royal College of General Practitioners.

Nick has also given insight lectures and training days to corporate audiences ranging from Proctor and Gamble and The Royal Mail, through to Credit Suisse and The BBC World Service. In April 2007, he gives a Masterclass to several hundred delegates on Positive Psychology and The Skills of Well-being for the annual London conference of The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (the CIPD).

The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, and Oxford Business School.

At Cambridge University in 2007, Nick will give insight lectures in Positive Psychology & The Skills of Well-being in a range of relevant departments. He has been a lecturer at Cambridge since 2001, when he became the UK's first lecturer in these emerging fields.

• For media performances, Nick is represented by Sue Ayton of www.KnightAyton.co.uk, the management agency who also represent Fiona Bruce, Professor Susan Greenfield, John Simpson, Trevor McDonald, Tim Sebastian, Michael Buerk, and Sue MacGregor.
• Nick is the on-screen psychologist for each episode of a ten-part BBC television series about 'dream careers' that is hosted by Adrian Chiles (presenter for Match of the Day, and Working Lunch). The new series has contributions from world-famous personalities in a range of careers, and will be broadcast in Spring 2007.
• Nick was a guest on the Libby Purves Radio 4 Midweek programme, May 2006.

• Co-editor of the Oxford University Press academic book called The Science of Well-Being (Huppert, Baylis and Keverne, 2005) that is based on The Royal Society conference which Nick co-organised in November 2003. (The Royal Society is Britain’s leading scientific institution and has 67 Nobel Laureates in its membership.) The OUP book contains 20 of the field’s leading voices, such as 2002 Nobel Prize-winning psychologist, Princeton University’s Daniel Kahneman. Within this volume, Nick contributes his own 14,000 word chapter called Relationship with Reality - and the well-being of young adults.
• Nick holds a Cambridge University PhD in Psychology (earned as a graduate of Jesus College), and is a qualified therapist and coach, working in private and corporate practice. His educational/therapeutic approach owes a great debt to the work of Milton H. Erickson while also encompassing the theory and practice of CBT, Psychodynamic, and Meridian Energy techniques. Compelling evidence from the emerging science of well-being infuses all of his work. He is trained in the practice of Clinical Hypnosis not only for remedial applications but also for skills-training and personal development. (The University College London 'Hypnosis Unit' in the Psychology Department, is the UK's centre of excellence for hypnosis training.)
• One of the key inspirations for Nick's studying lives going well, was his study of lives that ran aground, which led him to earn a Masters degree in Criminology from Cambridge University (1995). In 1998, he went on to set up a charity called Trail-Blazers (that can be seen at www.trail-blazers.org.uk) to offer job training and mentorship to the young guys serving time in Europe’s largest Young Offender Prison. Trail-Blazers is now a model for good practice, and it has a former Chief Inspector of Prisons, General Sir David Ramsbotham, as one of its Patrons.
• In 1999 and 2000, Nick ran a not-for-profit research project that set out to answer the question: How to Achieve your Goals in Life, and How to Enjoy the Journey. (Visit www.YoungLivesUK.com). This involved his interviewing hundreds of extremely accomplished men and women in all walks of life, ranging in age from 16 to 80 (from Nick Hornby to Gary Lineker, from Kate Adie to Bill Bryson), for which he was charitably sponsored by Nike, Orange, and Reuters.