Lara Wolfers (PhD 2021) is an Assistant Professor in the Amsterdam School of Communication Research (ASCoR) at the University of Amsterdam. She studies how mobile and social media are used in the family and how this usage relates to the well-being of the family members. She also studies how media can be used for coping with stress and for emotion regulation. Current projects include her Dutch Starter Grant Project "Beyond Screen Time: Unmasking the Power of Social Influence Processes in Social and Mobile Media’s Effect on Mental Health", the interdisciplinary research project "The Impact of Maternal Phone Use on Infant Social and Emotional Development Across Early Infancy: From Momentary Processes to Developmental Consequences" funded by the Children and Screens Institute, and the methods-focused project "Short But Still Valid: Validating One-Item Measures for Key Communication Constructs for Experience Sampling Research" . 

Lara previously worked at the Leibniz-Institut fuer Wissensmedien (knowledge media research center) in Tuebingen, Germany, as a PhD student. She received the Best Dissertation Award from the Mobile Communication Division of the International Communication Association in 2023. She completed her Master (University of Hohenheim, 2018) and Bachelor (Johannes Gutenberg-Universitaet Mainz, 2014) in communication science. During her studies she received several awards and scholarships including the Deutschlandstipendium and a scholarship of the Friedrich-Ebert-Foundation. From 2020-2022, Lara served as the early-career representative of the Mobile Communication Interest Group of the International Communication Association. 

Expertise and research fields

• Media use in the family
• Media use for coping with stress
• Social and mobile media use and well-being
• Media use, social norms, and guilt
• Quantitative methodologies with a focus on longitudinal data analysis and experience sampling designs