Her research, publication and teaching areas of interest include critical African studies; Africana, transnational and subaltern feminisms; queer African studies; motherhood studies; indigenous and contemporary African literatures and cultures; and decolonial knowledges. Her scholarship, extensively published in peer reviewed journals and books, seeks to define new critical approaches for conceptualizing and theorizing the lived experiences of Africana women. Muhonja was awarded the JMU Faculty Diversity Enhancement Award in 2012, she established JMU’s Africana Studies Conference, the JMU Model African Union simulation initiative (with the departments of Political Science and Justice Studies), and her article on reproductive and abortion rights won the JMU feminist scholarship award in 2011.