Her work explores the contextual factors – historical and anthropological – that contribute to the composition of the Hebrew Bible. Her current research is on the Dinah story in Genesis 34, dealing with the role of gender in the prohibitions against intermarriage and the women’s sexual consent (or lack thereof). It addresses how in this story, and others, theological agendas are promoted through sexual violence. Her first book Portrait of the Kings: The Davidic Prototype in Deuteronomistic Poetics received the 2016 Manfred Lautenschlaeger Award for Theological Promise. She earned her PhD from the University of California, Berkeley in Near Eastern Studies.