While she was trained in human anatomy and developmental cell biology, she also has a passion for traditional music as preserved and played by Irish and Scottish emigrants to North America. She studied ethnomusicology under Mícheál O Súilleabbháin at the University of Limerick and Irish fiddle under Laurel Martin, Séamus Connolly, and Kevin Burke. She has published widely on the evolution of traditional music in North America, and is finishing a book on how traditional music is learned and taught at summer camps both here and in Ireland. She performs regularly with her husband, Paul F. Wells, a noted musician and scholar of American fiddle traditions.