Michelle Symons

Michelle Symons completed her PhD in Communication Sciences at the University of Antwerp, where she conducted research on physical activity through smartphone apps and wearables. Her doctoral research examined, amongst other things, how humorous messages can contribute to motivation to exercise in mentally fatigued individuals. Following her doctorate, Michelle worked as a lecturer and postdoctoral researcher.

Today, Michelle brings together researchers, practice partners and organisations around themes such as wellbeing, prevention, health communication and digital health. She contributes to thinking around collaboration, valorisation and societal impact, with the aim of translating research findings into meaningful innovations for broader practice.

Brisk walking with a smile: tailoring to the internal dynamic determinant of cognitive fatigue by using humorous physical activity intervention messages 
https://hdl.handle.net/10067/1990480151162165141

• Apers, S., Symons, M., Vandebosch, H., & Perko, T. (2025). From Attention to Intention: Evaluating the Effectiveness of Social Media and Website Strategies in the Radon Buster Campaign. Journal of Health Communication, 1-17. https://doi.org/10.1080/10810730.2025.2562844
• Symons, M., Rahmani, M. H., Rudnicki, K., Cutello, C. A., Poels, K., & Vandebosch, H. (2024). Cognitive Fatigue, Humor, and Physical Activity: A Field Experiment Testing Whether Humorous Messages Promote Walking in Cognitively Fatigued Individuals. Health Communication, 40(10), 1869–1883. https://doi.org/10.1080/10410236.2024.2427336
• Rahmani, M. H., Symons, M., Sobhani, O., Berkvens, R., & Weyn, M. (2024). EmoWear: wearable physiological and motion dataset for emotion recognition and context awareness. Scientific data, 11(1), 648. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-024-03429-3
• Symons, M., Vandebosch, H., & Poels, K.(2024). Boosts for Walking: How Humorous Messages increase Brisk Walking among Cognitively Fatigued Individuals. BMC Public Health, 24 (128). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-023-17464-z
• Symons, M., Vandebosch, H., Cutello, C. A., & Poels, K. (2022). Message reminders encouraging brisk walking by considering the dynamic factor of cognitive fatigue. European journal of health communication, 3(3), 41-68. https://doi.org/10.47368/ejhc.2022.303
• Symons, M., Meira Cunha, C., Poels, K., Vandebosch, H., Dens, N., & Alida Cutello, C. (2021). Physical activity during the first lockdown of the COVID-19 pandemic: investigating the reliance on digital technologies, perceived benefits, barriers and the impact of affect. International journal of environmental research and public health, 18(11), 5555. https://doi.org/10.3390/IJERPH18115555 
• Erreygers, S., Symons, M., Vandebosch, H., & Pabian, S. (2022). Fictitious online victimization: Exploration and creation of a measurement instrument. New Media & Society, 24(1), 156-177.