Rate My Professor Laura Maria König

Laura Maria König is University Professor (Univ.-Prof. Dr.) of Health Psychology in the Faculty of Psychology at the University of Vienna, where she serves as Head of the Health Psychology Group within the Department of Clinical and Health Psychology since 2023. She earned her B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees in Psychology with a minor in computer science, followed by a Ph.D. in Psychology from the University of Konstanz in 2018. Her dissertation was awarded the Stiftung-Schmieder-Preis 2018 by the Stiftung Schmieder für Wissenschaft und Forschung. Previously, König was Junior Professor of Public Health Nutrition at the University of Bayreuth's Faculty of Life Sciences: Food, Nutrition and Health from 2020 to 2023. She conducted research and teaching at the University of Konstanz Department of Psychology from 2014 to 2020 and served as a DFG postdoctoral fellow at the University of Cambridge School of Clinical Medicine in 2020. In 2022, she received the Stan Maes Early Career Award from the European Health Psychology Society.

König's research focuses on psychological, social, and economic determinants of eating and physical activity behaviors, developing and evaluating digital interventions and choice architecture approaches to foster healthier lifestyles. She examines the impact of digital environments, including social media, on lifestyle behaviors, addresses health-related misinformation, and investigates the validity of digital measurement methods for eating behavior, including measurement reactivity and socioeconomic disparities in intervention outcomes. With 128 publications, key works include "Barriers to and Facilitators for Using Nutrition Apps: Systematic Review and Conceptual Framework" (JMIR mHealth and uHealth, 2021), "Assessing Dispositional and In-the-Moment Eating Motives by Ecological Momentary Assessment" (JMIR mHealth and uHealth, 2020), "A Scoping Review of the Mechanisms Influencing Socioeconomic Disparities in Outcomes of Digital Interventions for Weight-Related Behaviors" (Obesity Reviews, 2026), and "Conjoint Analysis of Social Inequality Indicators in Diet and Physical Activity App (Non-)Users" (Digital Health, 2026). She teaches Health Psychology courses, supervises master's and doctoral theses, and engages in public outreach through media articles and podcasts on health behaviors and digital health technologies.