Her scholarship focuses on the role of literature as an archive of the past, especially in terms of Shakespeare, original performance practices and early modern English material culture. She is an expert on olfaction in the Renaissance and the author of The Ephemeral History of Perfume: Scent and Sense in Early Modern England (JHU Press, 2011). She teaches courses on women writers, the English Renaissance, Shakespearean London, Milton and literature and economics at The George Washington University. She is currently working on two book projects: Shakespeare and the Senses (under contract with Oxford University Press), which explores the sensory aspects of early modern performance, and The Famous Ape, which traces the role of animal actors from the Renaissance to the modern era.