Her scholarly work and professional practice are concerned with education, development, poverty and inequalities, and particularly gender, socio-economic and ethnic inequalities in education. She has served as the Principal Investigator on multi-year, multi-country studies funded by The MasterCard Foundation and CARE. She has also worked on education projects with UNICEF, USAID, Aga Khan, the World Bank, and the Department of Labor, and conducted research in Vietnam, Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Tanzania, Uganda, South Africa, Honduras, and Australia.