Muna Aikins

External LIFE Fellow from 2022 to 2025, MPI for Human Development

Dissertation submitted to FU Berlin in May 2025:

Biosocial Pathways of Racialized Disparities in Children’s and Adolescents’ Mental Health

(Advisor: Laurel Raffington)

Selected Publications

Aikins, M.*, Willems, Y.*, Fraemke, D., Mitchell, C., Goosby, B., & Raffington, L. (2025). Linked emergence of racial disparities in mental health and epigenetic biological aging across childhood and adolescence. Molecular Psychiatry. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41380-025-03010-3

*Shared first authorship

Aikins, M. A., Willems, Y. E., Fraemke, D., & Raffington, L. (2024). Beyond a shared history: A biosocial perspective on sociogenomics and racism in Germany. Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie, 76, 573–602. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11577-024-00934-6

Raffington, L., Schwaba, T., Aikins, M., Richter, D., Wagner, G. G., Harden, K. P., Belsky, D. W., & Tucker-Drob, E. M. (2023). Associations of socioeconomic disparities with buccal DNA-methylation measures of biological aging. Clinical Epigenetics, 15, Article 70. https://doi.org/10.1186/s13148-023-01489-7