Piers worked until his recent retirement as Associate Professor (the local title is “Reader”) in Psychology at Bucks New University. He wrote, validated, and co-led the university’s M.Sc. Applied Positive Psychology for seven years, which established an international reputation for student care. His continuing research and writing interests include Second Wave Positive Psychology and Existential Positive Psychology, and the psychology of ageing well. His doctoral thesis explored how creativity develops and changes as we age.
Piers is also a Chartered Psychologist (Research and Teaching) and an accredited psychotherapist with 20+ years of practice experience. The majority of this work has focused on younger people in university educational settings.
His experience both in teaching and counselling is the “core conditions” proposed by Carl Rogers. When offered by an educator or therapist, these conditions provide a profound environment in which individuals naturally orientate themselves towards questions of meaning, and then explore and make life choices reflecting the actualising tendency.