Michael Plant is the Founder and Director of the Happier Lives Institute and a post-doctoral Research Fellow and the Wellbeing Research Centre at the University of Oxford. He is also a Research Associate at the London School of Economics’ Centre for Economic Performance.

Michael is a moral philosopher. His main research interests are whether and how to make people happier. He obtained his D. Phil. in Philosophy from the University of Oxford under the superivision of Peter Singer and Hilary Greaves. His thesis, entitled Doing Good Badly? Philosophical Issues Related to Effective Altruism, critiqued and developed various ‘standard’ views in the effective altruism social movement about how individuals can do the most good with their resources. Specifically, it examined the value of saving lives, how best to make people happier during their lives, and cause prioritisation methodology (tools for determining which of the world’s problems are the most pressing).

Michael originally studied philosophy at St Andrews, where he was awarded a first; he then went to the London School of Economics, where he was one mark short of a distinction – something he is definitely, absolutely, not still bitter about.

In between these two degrees, he worked as a Parliamentary Researcher for Sir Michael Fallon MP. He thinks he once wrote a speech on shipping policy with some really good puns. Unfortunately, the speech – and all the jokes within it – have since sunk without trace.

During the the first two years of the D. Phil. Michael tried to start a start-up to develop Hippo, happiness tracker/trainer app, which he grandly described as “the FitBit for the mind.” No one thought the app was any good and Michael eventually abandoned his dreams of becoming a tech billionaire to seek his fame and fortune in academic philosophy instead.

During the last two years of the D. Phil, Michael worked Peter Singer’s Research Assistant, helping with a book proposal and on Peter’s Project Syndicate columns, two of which – on mental health and on Notre-Dame – they co-wrote.

Michael finds writing in the third person odd.