She did her Ph.D. in Social Anthropology at New Hall, Cambridge (1981), and has done fieldwork with the Sa'dan Toraja people of Sulawesi (Indonesia) since 1978. Her ethnographic monograph on the Sa'dan Toraja, Paths and Rivers: Sa'dan Toraja Society in Transformation was published by KITLV, Leiden in 2009. Since 2002 she has been teaching critical and practical courses on visual ethnography. Her other current interests include social memory, life history and childhood research.