William Hayward


William Hayward Image
Dean of Social Sciences, Lingnan University

William Hayward is an experimental psychologist, originally from New Zealand but having lived most of the last 20 years in Hong Kong. He grew up in Christchurch and attended the University of Canterbury, graduating with a BA and MA in Psychology. He studied at Yale University for his PhD, which he received in 1995.

After teaching at the University of Wollongong, he took a position in the Department of Psychology at the Chinese University of Hong Kong in 1999, and then moved to the University of Hong Kong in 2006. In 2014 he returned to New Zealand to take up the position of Professor and Head of the School of Psychology at the University of Auckland. However, the lure of Hong Kong proved too strong, so he moved back in 2017 to take up the role of Dean of Social Sciences at the University of Hong Kong.

He is now the Dean of Social Sciences at Lingnan University in Hong Kong.

Will lives with his wife and two teenage children on Hong Kong Island. In his spare time he runs ultramarathons, and has completed six races of 100 miles or longer.