She completed her Ph.D. in history in May 2013 at West Virginia University. Dr. Turman's interests are in modern U.S., social, cultural, and public history. She specializes in oral history and local historical research and teaches courses on community history and historic preservation, museums and archives, oral history, and historic interpretation. Oral history was a major component of her dissertation, titled "Appalachian Alter-Natives: The Back-to-the-Land Migration and Community Change, 1970-2000."