Her area of research is environmental rhetoric with a focus on the persuasive strategies used to construct identity and place in community- level environmental disputes. She has examined the discourse and images of environmental protest and, most recently, the visual construction of toxicity. Professor Peeples is the Past-President of the Environmental Communication Division of the National Communication Association and serves on the editorial board of Environmental Communication: A Journal of Nature and Culture and the Quarterly Journal of Speech. She has won a number of regional and national awards for her research, most recently the 2012 Christine L. Oravec Research Award from the National Communication Association.