Toni Antonucci

Toni Antonucci is the Elizabeth M. Douvan Collegiate Professor of Psychology at the University of Michigan, a Senior Research Scientist at the Institute for Social Research, and a 2025 elected member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. A life-span developmental psychologist, she has directed major longitudinal and cross-cultural studies of social relations and health in the United States, Europe, and Japan, and has served as president of both APA Division 20 and the Gerontological Society of America.

Education:

• Ph.D. in Psychology, Wayne State University

Research Interests:

Antonucci’s scholarship centers on how social networks—what she terms “convoys of social relations”—shape health, cognition, and well-being from childhood through very old age. Her recent work integrates multilevel epidemiological methods to examine neighborhood, network, and individual predictors of cognitive aging and dementia disparities, with special attention to Arab-American, Black, and Latino families. She also investigates age-differential impacts of remote work, economic shocks such as the Great Recession, and pandemic-related stress on loneliness and psychological distress across gender and cultural contexts.

Across more than 200 publications, her 2023-2025 output reveals a concentrated emphasis on: (1) social determinants of cognitive health and dementia disparities; (2) culturally adapted caregiver interventions for Arab-American and minority families; (3) longitudinal trajectories of social convoys and their protective effects on cognition; (4) cross-national analyses of work expectations and mental health in later life; and (5) neighborhood and migration influences on aging immigrants. These themes collectively advance a contextual, life-course understanding of how macro-social conditions interact with micro-level social ties to produce differential aging outcomes.

Scientific Awards & Leadership:

• Past-President, Adult Development & Aging (APA Div 20)
• Past-President, Gerontological Society of America
• 2001 APA Division 20 Master Mentor Award
• President-Elect, Society for the Study of Human Development
• Council Member, International Association of Gerontology
• Elected Member, American Academy of Arts & Sciences (2025)

Grants, Doctoral Training & Labs:

Antonucci has been continuously funded by NIH and private foundations for large-scale longitudinal surveys and intervention trials, including the ongoing “Social Relations and Health across the Life Span” second-wave data collection. She mentors doctoral students in the Psychology of Aging Graduate Training Program and is affiliated with the Life Course Development Program and the ISR Survey Research Center; her research group applies advanced multilevel and structural-equation modeling to study how social factors compound or buffer cognitive and health disparities over decades.