Her research interests began with a very strong interest in African art and literature and gradually added the colonial state, nationalism, women's history, and the African Diaspora, specifically the Anglophone Caribbean. Most of her research and writing thus far has focused on women's social and economic history in colonial Nigeria. Her first book, The Bluest Hands: A Social and Economic History of Women Indigo Dyers in Western Nigeria, brought many of her interests together in an examination of the transformation of indigo dyeing and textile production in Abeokuta, a town famous for its indigo dyed cloth, adire. It illuminated the ways in which the colonial state transformed women's economic life as well as the ways women navigated the new economic landscape and pressed the colonial state to protect their livelihoods.