Her work examines the intersections of educational leadership and policy in rural communities, with a specific focus on rural school superintendents and school boards. She received her doctorate from the Pennsylvania State University, followed by a Postdoctoral Fellowship at Northwestern University, where she studied school district organization and improvement. She has previously worked with the Consortium for Policy Research in Education (CPRE) at University of Pennsylvania, and the Center on Rural Education and Communities at Penn State. Hall's work has been published in Education Policy Analysis Archives, Rural Sociology, the Journal of Research in Rural Education, and Education Week, among other journals. In 2017, she received the Outstanding Dissertation Award in Education Policy and Politics for her study of school boards in a locally controlled state.