Who we are — Exploring Happiness

Elliot Jones

**Role:** Editor
**Origin:** East Sussex, United Kingdom
**Personal Interests:** Tennis, Sailing, Swimming and Photography.
**Research Interests:** Sustainable Development, Macroeconomics, Sovereign Debt, Wellbeing, Public Policy and Inequality.
**Inspirational people:** Roger Federer, Ben Howard, Michelle and Barack Obama.
**Number of countries visited:** 23
**Favourite Destination:** Barcelona, Spain

Elliot is the Editor of Exploring Happiness and orchestrates the research that we produce. He is a qualified economist with a masters degree in Macroeconomic Policy from the Barcelona Graduate School of Economics. His view is that the concepts that economics are built upon are incredibly helpful for informing how public policies can be created in order to benefit society. However, the aims of these policies are too often focussed towards increasing monetary wealth and not enough towards equal and sustainable increases in wellbeing or quality of life. This is what motivates him to produce research on wellbeing. His year abroad in Barcelona has given him a taste for living outside the UK and now he aspires to the travel the world, in hunt of new experiences that can help with our research. If you’re interested in reading some more of his writing beyond whats included within this website, head over to his Medium page.

Jess Golding

**Role:** Creative Director
**Origin:** Surrey, United Kingdom
**Personal Interests:** Painting, growing fruit and vegetables, visiting beaches, watersports and sourdough baking.
**Research Interests:** Speech & Language Therapy, Neuroscience and Mental Wellbeing.
**Inspirational people:** David Attenborough, Jacinda Ardern and Rihanna.
**Number of countries visited:** 30
**Favourite Destination:** Bali, Indonesia

Jess provides some creativity to Exploring Happiness and is the more well-travelled of the two of us. During her gap year, she travelled around Asia, falling in love with Bali and the lifestyle of being a traveller. Back home she is a qualified Speech and Language Therapist and has a masters degree in this from City, University of London. Given this, she tends to lead on any research that we produce in relation to health sciences. Typically, this is focused towards mental health or neuroscience. Relatedly, of the two of us, Jess has been blessed with more activity in the right-hemisphere of the brain (creative side), meaning she is in charge off all the visual aspects of Exploring Happiness.