Her research focuses on the economic history of the Old Kingdom, particularly analyzing central-provincial economic interactions using the ceramic corpus to address the topic at the provincial level where the texts shed very little light. She has done extensive archaeological fieldwork in Egypt, at sites such as Abydos, Mendes, and Kharga. Currently, Dr. Warden is the Head Ceramicist for the North Kharga Oasis Survey, where she supervises collection and analysis of a ceramic corpus ranging in date from the New Kingdom to the Late Roman Period.