Postdoctoral researcher in Social Sciences
I am Anaëlle Gonzalez (PhD), a French communication scholar and postdoctoral researcher at the Media Psychology Lab (KU Leuven, Belgium), where I study how social media shape adolescents’ moral and political development. I completed my PhD under the supervision of Prof. Laura Vandenbosch as part of the ERC-funded MIMIc project (Malleability in mediated ideals: A paradigm to understand effects of contemporary media in adolescents’ well-being). My dissertation, Politics Undercover: Understanding the role of social media personalities in the development of adolescents’ political self, drew from communication, political, and psychological sciences to examine how entertainment figures on social media convey political, value-laden, and morally charged content — and how this content shapes adolescents’ political socialization. I’m now continuing this line of work with a KU Leuven Postdoctoral Mandate (2025–2026), extending it to the moral and ideological effects of influencer content.
Apart from my work, I spend a lot of time trying to make sense of my inner and outer worlds through writing, including poetry, letters, and unfinished thoughts. My personal and academic interests often meet around questions of digital ethics: how technologies shape the way we relate to ourselves, to others, and to the societies we live in. I also love spending time in nature and I am drawn to creative practices such as ceramics and painting. I am a fervent enthusiast of newsletters and I sometimes feel anxious about all the things I will never have the time to learn. Mental health topics are very important to me, and I do my best to encourage more open and gentle conversations around them.
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