She received her PhD from the Department of East Asian Studies at Princeton University in 2011. After completing an MA in Japanese Language and Culture in 2003 at the University of Hamburg, Germany, she spent two years doing graduate work in Japan at Osaka City University and the University of Fukui. Her dissertation is entitled “Poor Relief and the Negotiation of Local Order in Early Modern Japan.” Focusing on the case of Ōno domain in Echizen province, it explores the various ways in which poor relief in the Tokugawa period was shaped by the relationships between local status groups, including marginal groups such as professional beggars and the guilds of the blind that enjoyed official begging rights.