James Meredith Day, Ph.D.

Professeur, Universite catholique de Louvain, UCL
Web: http://www.uclouvain.be/en-jmday.html
Psychological Science Research Institute,
Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences

Place Cardinal Mercier 10
1348 Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium

Email: james.day@uclouvain.be 
Phone: xx32.10.479304  or xx32.486.141323

James is Professor of Human Development and the Psychology of Religion at the Universite catholique de Louvain, Psychological Science Research Institute and Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium, and a licensed, practicing, clinical and consulting psychologist at PsyGroup, in Brussels.

James is also the Very Distinguished Visiting Professor in the University of Uppsala, Sweden, Research Fellow in the Center on Terrorism at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in the City University of New York (CUNY), Adjunct Professor in the University of New Hampshire, Fellow of the German Science Foundation Research Group in Moral Psychology, co-founder of the European Society for Research in Adult Development, and Co-Director of the Louvain-Harvard Project in Cognitive Complexity and Religious Cognition, served for years as Associate Editor of the Archive for the Psychology of Religion: The Journal of the International Association of the Psychology of Religion, Scientific Consultant to the Poetics of Selfhood Project, and is a reviewer for many scholarly publications. James co-founded the Inter-Spiritualties Project at the University of Louvain, Belgium’s first, university-based, project devoted to inter-religious dialogue.

James’s work has been widely cited as a formative influence in narrative psychology, moral psychology, and in the psychology of religion. His work has been supported by The National Science Foundation of the USA, The National Science Foundation of Belgium, the National Science Foundation of Portugal, and Metanexus Institute of the John Templeton Foundation. He has won teaching awards at Louvain, and the Award for Contributions to Ethics in the Education of Counselors and Psychologists from the American Counseling Association.

Education:
James studied comparative religion at Oberlin where his senior honors seminar paper was “Images of Women in the Literature of Soren Kierkegaard”, was a visiting scholar at Columbia University and Union Theological Seminary in New York while still an undergraduate, then did degrees in psychology at Harvard University, and the APA doctoral program in counseling-professional psychology at the University of Pennsylvania. Later he pursued an advanced degree in theology at Cambridge University.

Published Work:
 James’s published work has appeared in many books including the Oxford Handbook of Adult Development and Learning, The Development and Structure of Conscience, Religious Voices in Self-Narratives: Making Sense of Life in Times of Transition, The Postconventional Personality, Social Constructionism and Theology, Constructs of Meaning and Religious Transformation: Current issues in the psychology of religion, Heremeneutical Approaches in the Psychology of Religion, and many others.

Journals in which his articles have appeared include American Psychologist, Behavioral Development Bulletin, Estudios de Psicología, Human Development, Journal of Adult Development, Journal of Constructivist Psychology, Journal of Clinical Psychology, Journal of Counseling and Development, Journal of Education, International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, Journal for Moral Education, Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, Journal of Sex Research, Journal of Sexual and Relationship Therapy, Theoria et Educacion,Theory and Psychology, and World Futures: The Journal of General Evolution.

James’ applied work has included supervision of school psychologists, founding and leading Belgium’s first inter-religious dialogue project at Louvain, and radio and television broadcasts. 

James is the father of three living children: Julia, Jonathan, and Jacob, and lives in Brussels, Belgium.

Click here for his obituary