Her research interests are in the history of medieval science, medicine, and technology. She is the author (as E.R. Truitt) of articles on the history of astronomy, pharmacobotany, timekeeping technologies, and the history of automata, and her work has been supported by the Mellon Foundation, the National Science Foundation, The Huntington Library, and the Chemical Heritage Foundation. Her monograph, Medieval Robots: Mechanism, Magic, Nature, and Art, was published by the University of Pennsylvania Press in 2015.