Overview
Terrie E. Moffitt, Ph.D., is the Nannerl O. Keohane University Professor of Psychology at Duke University, and Professor of Social Development at King’s College London. Her expertise is in the areas of longitudinal methods, developmental theory, mental disorders and antisocial behaviors, neuropsychology, and genomics in behavioral science. She is currently uncovering the consequences of a lifetime of mental and behavioral disorder on processes of aging. She is the Associate Director of the Dunedin Longitudinal Study, which follows a 1972 birth cohort in New Zealand. She also co-founded the Environmental Risk Longitudinal Twin Study (E-Risk), which follows a 1994 birth cohort in the UK. Dr. Moffitt also is a licensed clinical psychologist, with specialization in neuropsychological assessment. She collaborates with criminologists, economists, geneticists, epidemiologists, sociologists, demographers, gerontologists, statisticians, neuroscientists, medical scientists, opthalmologists, and dentists. Dr. Moffitt is a fellow of the National Academy of Medicine and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences , as well as the British Academy, Academy of Medical Sciences (UK), Academia Europa, Association of Psychological Science, and the American Society of Criminology. She holds honorary doctorates from the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium, and Universitat Basel, Switzerland. For her research, Dr. Moffitt has received both the American Psychological Association's Early Career Contribution Award and Distinguished Career Award. Dr. Moffitt was also awarded a Royal Society-Wolfson Merit Award, the Klaus-Grawe Prize, and was a recipient of the Stockholm Prize in Criminology, NARSAD Ruane Prize, the Klaus J. Jacobs Research Prize, and in 2022 the Grawemeyer Prize. Her service includes serving as chair of the Board on Behavioral, Cognitive, and Sensory Science at NASEM, Chair of the NIA Data Monitoring Committee for the Health and Retirement Study, and Chair of the Jury for the Klaus J. Jacobs Prize in Switzerland. Dr. Moffitt attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill for her undergraduate degree in psychology. She continued her training in psychology at the University of Southern California, receiving an M.A. in experimental animal behavior, and a Ph.D. in clinical psychology. She also completed postdoctoral training in geriatrics and neuropsychology at the University of California Los Angeles Neuropsychiatric Institute. In her spare time, she works on her poison-ivy farm in North Carolina.
Current Appointments & Affiliations
Recent Publications
Parental income and psychiatric disorders from age 10 to 40: a genetically informative population study.
Journal Article Journal of child psychology and psychiatry, and allied disciplines · January 2026 BackgroundLower parental income is associated with more psychiatric disorders among offspring, but it is unclear if this association reflects effects of parental income (social causation) or shared risk factors (social selection). Prior research f ... Full text CiteMaternal expressions of warmth and negativity and adolescent mental health: using longitudinal monozygotic twin-difference analyses to approach causal inference.
Journal Article Journal of child psychology and psychiatry, and allied disciplines · January 2026 BackgroundEmotions that mothers express about their offspring are associated with offspring mental health during childhood, but little research has explored whether this extends into adolescence. We investigated associations between maternal warmt ... Full text CitePTSD and suPAR: A multicohort investigation of chronic inflammation.
Journal Article Brain Behav Immun · January 2026 Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is associated with poor health. Prior research has shown stressful events are associated with inflammatory biomarkers, such as soluble urokinase plasminogen activator receptor (suPAR), suggesting systemic chronic inflam ... Full text Open Access Link to item CiteRecent Grants
Leveraging Artificial Intelligence to Predict Mental Health Risk among Youth Presenting to Rural Primary Care Clinics
ResearchCo Investigator · Awarded by National Institutes of Health · 2025 - 2029Duke-NCCU Interdisciplinary Postdoctoral Training Program in Child Psychiatric and Neurodevelopmental Conditions Program (DN-IPT)
Inst. Training Prgm or CMEPreceptor · Awarded by National Institute of Mental Health · 2024 - 2029Duke University Program in Environmental Health
Inst. Training Prgm or CMEMentor · Awarded by National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences · 2019 - 2029View All Grants