Her work focuses on the culture and politics of resource use and environmental change in the Middle East. Dr Barnes s publications include Cultivating the Nile: the everyday politics of water in Egypt (Duke University Press, 2014), Climate cultures: anthropological perspectives on climate change (co-edited with Michael R. Dove, Yale University Press, 2015), and articles in a number of peer-reviewed journals, including Critique of Anthropology, Social Studies of Science, and Geoforum. Her current project, funded by a fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies, draws on ethnographic and archival work to examine food security in Egypt and the long-standing identification of security with self-sufficiency in wheat and bread.