Her medical anthropological research focuses on environmental pollution, food security, and risk assessment in the Far North. She is especially interested in how Arctic scholars and public health officials define biological injury and social risk from methylmercury exposure in fish and marine mammals. Drawing on years of fieldwork in Arctic Alaska, her work also involves the study of religious syncretism and social change in the Arctic. She has documented contemporary Iñupiaq experiences with human-animal transformation and is currently studying soul travel among villagers and urban Iñupiat in Alaska.