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James Thomas Neill (March 4, 1970 - ) is an Australian psychologist who is known for advancing knowledge and research about outdoor education and for his website Wilderdom which emphasizes simple living based on principles of permaculture, outdoor education and humanistic psychology. He has authored approximately a dozen academic peer reviewed papers on outdoor education research (see References), including meta-analyses of the psychoeducational effects of outdoor education and the Life Effectiveness Questionnaire. Neill is also an advocate of academic copyleft internet publishing.
Life and work edit
An academic in the field of outdoor education, James Thomas Neill was born in Perth where he studied a Bachelor of Science at the University of Western Australia (1989-1991) and honours in Psychology at the Australian National University in 1994. During this time his life revolved around work with Outward Bound in Australia and a focus on studying the psychological aspects of how humans and groups behave under experiential education and stress inoculation conditions. Neill subsequently authored and edited several outdoor education research projects, including the Australian Journal of Outdoor Education before turning his attention to open source internet publishing in outdoor education and psychology. In 2004, he received the Outstanding Contribution to the Industry award from ORIC (Outdoor Recreation Industry Council of New South Wales).
After leaving high school, Neill worked as an Outward Bound instructor and engaged in simple living experiments, in the mould of Henry David Thoreau, inspired by Buckminster Fuller, humanistic psychology, and the principles of permaculture. Experiences included fruit picking, sensory deprivation, a sail training voyage across the Pacific in 1992 and living in a hut on the Booroomba Homestead in the Australian Capital Territory.
Neill worked at the University of New Hampshire in the Kinesiology Department in the outdoor education undergraduate and postgraduate degree programs (2000-2002), then returned to Australia where he is currently a lecturer and researcher in the Centre for Applied Psychology at the University of Canberra.
In 2003, Neill started the Wilderdom website, which consists of approximately 1500 pages on the psychology of change, experiential learning, outdoor education, team building and group-dynamic games and attracts approximately 8,000 visitors a day. Neill currently resides in the village of Tharwa, Australian Capital Territory.
References edit
- Staff Details - University of Canberra
- Professional Homepage
- Articles & Presentations by James Neill
- Wilderdom (readership of 8000/day and an Alexa ranking of 22,000 (Dec, 2005), see traffic details)