Boredom Experience and Associated Behaviors: A Lifelong Research by Dr. Augustin de la Peña

About Augustin de la Peña

Augustin de la Peña was born December 28 1942 in Brownsville Texas. He graduated in psychology from the University of Texas Austin with a minor in mathematics and held a PhD Cum Laude from Stanford University. His doctorate focused on cognitive developmental psychology and developmental sleep-wake psychophysiology. He conducted postdoctoral research at the University of California Los Angeles specializing in the psychology and psychophysiology of boredom and interest entertainment arousal alertness sleepiness and fatigue. With more than 30 years of clinical and research experience in sleep disorders he served as director of sleep disorder centers in California and Texas. He also taught for 15 years in medical schools. Throughout his career he wrote more than 50 academic publications including The Psychobiology of Cancer: Automation and Boredom in Health and Disease (Praeger 1983). Josefa Ros Velasco is a Marie Skodowska-Curie postdoctoral researcher at the Complutense University of Madrid where she leads the project Pre-Bored. Well-being and Prevention of Boredom in Spanish Nursing Homes. Previously she was a postdoctoral researcher at Harvard University as part of the Distinguished Junior Scholars program. She is a specialist in boredom studies and the president of the International Society of Boredom Studies. She is the author of The Disease of Boredom (Alianza Editorial 2022) and editor of Suicide in Modern Literature (Springer 2021) The Faces of Depression in Literature (Peter Lang 2020) The Culture of Boredom (Brill 2020) and Boredom Is in Your Mind (Springer 2019). She is the recipient of the Spanish National Research Prize (2022) and the Lincoln Book Prize for Excellence in Teaching and Service at Harvard University (2019). Christian Parreno is assistant professor of history and theory of architecture at Universidad San Francisco de Quito. His research explores conditions of boredom and sameness in the ideation and experience of the modern built environment. He is the author of Boredom Architecture and Spatial Experience (Bloomsbury 2021); and his writings have appeared in Architectural Histories; Architecture & Culture; Emotions: History Culture Society; Log; The Journal of Architecture; The Journal of Architectural Education; The Journal of Boredom Studies; Textual Practice; and several edited volumes.