Her research interests center around the political economy and cultural politics of development and environmental change in Tibetan areas of the PRC. Projects she has pursued include mushroom harvesting and conflicts over property rights in forests in Kham (Yunnan); grassland conflict resolution and state incorporation in Amdo (mostly Qinghai); and the cultural politics of identity and difference in the Tibetan diaspora. Her dissertation, entitled Taming the Tibetan Landscape: Transformations of Agricultural Land and Labor is an ethnographic and historical study of development and agriculture around Lhasa, with a focus on greenhouse vegetable farming in the period of economic reform.