She was previously a postdoctoral fellow at Brown University's Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs. She is preparing a book manuscript on migration and urbanization in China, titled "Beneath the China Boom: Labor, Citizenship, and the Making of a Rural Land Market." Her research uses ethnography to examining the relationship between migration and capital accumulation, specifically by treating migration not as an outcome to be explained but as a mechanism that actively shapes capital flows. Her articles have appeared in Gender & Society, Journal of Peasant Studies, andThe China Quarterly, and received an award from the American Sociological Association's Labor and Labor Movements Section.