She has traveled extensively in Italy for 20 years to do archival research, including in Rome, Florence, Bologna, Modena, Siena, and Venice, among others. Her first book, Rituals of Prosecution, concerned the Italian Inquisition’s use of religious ritual to prosecute Protestant heretics in the sixteenth century. Her current research project examines the Papal States’ prosecution of morality crimes (adultery, sacrilege, sodomy, etc.) in the Counter Reformation era.