Eranda Jayawickreme awarded honorary doctorate for contributions to science and society

Eranda Jayawickreme, Harold W. Tribble Professor of Psychology and a senior research fellow with the Program for Leadership and Character, was recently awarded an honorary doctorate from Utrecht University in recognition of his contributions to science and society.

Jayawickreme’s research focuses on post-traumatic growth as positive personality change, moral personality, wisdom, well-being and integrative theories of personality. He earned a Ph.D. in positive and social/personality psychology from the University of Pennsylvania and a Bachelor of Arts from Franklin and Marshall College. 

“I hope that this honorary doctorate deepens a collaboration with Utrecht University that enriches both my research and my teaching at Wake Forest,” said Jayawickreme.

With a strong tradition of methodological rigor in personality science, Jayawickreme believes Utrecht University’s program fits naturally with his work on post-traumatic growth and character. “One direction I’m especially excited about is cross-cultural work examining when cultural narratives around growth following adversity help, when they harm, and what alternative frameworks might better serve different communities,” he said.

He plans to leverage his connection with Utrecht University to offer new perspectives and opportunities for students and colleagues at Wake Forest while creating opportunities for collaboration between the two institutions. Jayawickreme said he hopes that engagement with Utrecht will provide new angles and tools for modeling an important goal of science: taking widely held ideas seriously enough to test them carefully and refine or challenge them when the evidence demands it.

Much of Jayawickreme’s research challenges popular intuitions, which can be an uncomfortable message for many. That perspective also informs a forthcoming book on post-traumatic growth that grew out of a first-year seminar he taught at Wake Forest. His favorite part of teaching Wake Forest students, he said, is their genuine curiosity and willingness to sit with uncertainty, even when it causes discomfort.

Jayawickreme added, “What I love about Wake Forest students is that they’re willing to engage with that discomfort, to ask hard questions, and to think carefully about what the evidence actually shows rather than defaulting to comfortable narratives. … The questions my students raised and the conversations we had in that seminar played an important role in how I framed the book’s arguments.”

Jayawickreme currently leads the Clarifying the Virtue Profile of the Excellent Thinker Project, supported by the John Templeton Foundation, and serves as a Science of Honesty Project Leader for the Honesty Project, an initiative exploring new directions in the study of the character virtue of honesty. His earlier research leadership includes the Pathways to Character Project, which examined the possibilities for strengthening character following adversity, challenge or failure, as well as projects on moral exemplars and intellectual humility. He has conducted research with populations in Rwanda, Sri Lanka and across the United States.

Read the full announcement detailing his honorary doctorate online.