Daniel Bowling

Daniel S. Bowling III is an interdisciplinary scholar whose focus is at the intersection of law, positive psychology, and work. He taught at Duke Law School for 18 years until his retirement in 2022 and was the 2015 recipient of Duke Law's Distinguished Teaching Award. After leaving Duke he joined the faculty of Georgia State University College of Law, where he served as visiting professor until 2024.

Bowling introduced positive psychology into legal education in 2012 when he created and taught a  course exploring the connection between happiness, professionalism, and work satisfaction. “Well-being and the Practice of Law,” the first such course offered in a law school as part of the regular curriculum, has become the model for other law schools. In 2018, Bowling published Teaching Positive Psychology in Law School, a chapter in a psychiatry textbook in which the details of the course and the theories behind it are set forth. Along with Dr. Peggy Kern, he conducted an empirical study of law students at Emory and American law schools and the correlation of grades and well-being, published in the Journal of Research in Psychology in 2014. He has also served as an assistant instructor in MAPP since his graduation from the program in 2009.

Along with his work in positive psychology he taught courses on labor and employment law both Duke and GSU. He is acknowledged by media outlets on all sides of the political spectrum as a leading expert on the growth of labor in the professional world. His current focus is on well-being in the field of medicine and its link to employee activism. Since 2022, he has published with colleagues four articles in  leading medical journals, including what is considered the seminal work in the field, The Rise and Potential of Physician Unions.

Until joining the academic world in 2006, he was Senior Vice President of Human Resources for Coca-Cola Enterprises Inc., a Fortune 125 company. In that capacity, he was responsible for all human resources matters for the company's 80,000 employees in North America and Western Europe, including 35,000 working under two hundred labor contracts. In addition to his human resources responsibilities, Bowling was a member of the corporation's governing executive committee. During his twenty-year career in the Coca-Cola system, Bowling served in many roles, including heading one of the largest business units in the company. He joined CCE in 1986 as Chief Labor Counsel.

Bowling graduated cum laude with honors in English from Millsaps College in 1977. He received his JD from Duke University School of Law in 1980, and a master's degree in positive psychology from the University of Pennsylvania in 2009.