Peer-Reviewed Publications
Aniefuna, L. A., Aniefuna, M. A., & Williams, J. M. (2020). Creating and undoing legacies of resilience: Black women as martyrs in the Black community under police surveillance. Women & Criminal Justice.
Abstract
Ethnographic observations and in-depth interviews with Black women (n = 9) in Baltimore, MD following the protests after the police-involved murder of Freddie Gray. Participants detailed the resultant hypervigilant mothering from direct and vicarious traumatic interactions with police and other state representatives. We found that they engage in creative survival coping strategies for gendered racism related stress.
This paper includes a historical policy analysis illustrating how housing discrimination, redlining, segregation and the recent DOJ consent decree with Baltimore Police Department undergirds concentrated police surveillance in select Baltimore neighborhoods.
Also selected for an edited book in Dec 2023, Criminalizing Motherhood and Reproduction (pp.47-64).
Under Review
Aniefuna, M. A. (2025). Barely seen, rarely heard: An epidemiological analysis
of pre-Covid-19 Black adolescent depression and resilience.
Abstract
During and after the pandemic, researchers have paid attention to the concerning mental health realities facing Black adolescents and teenagers. This quantitative analysis utilizes CDC data to map the baseline data underpinning the Black youth mental health crisis and explore the needs of Black youth with intersectional identities.
Aniefuna, M. A. (2025). Still here, still queer, still Black: Identifying needs of
Black trans adolescents in hyperpolitical public schools.
Abstract
This paper examines contextualizes the lived realities of Black trans youth struggling with the complexities of in/visibility and the matrix of oppression and privilege. This analysis considers the unprecedented number of proposed bills banning gender-related medical care, the effects on mainstream dialogue on gender identity and schools, and identity development, stress, and coping.