Her research interests include the political economy of development with a focus on the role of business and the private sector in Africa. She is currently finishing up a book on the business response to social crisis, which includes an examination of the private sector response to HIV/AIDS in four AIDS-affected countries. While at Princeton, Handley will be working on the nature of state formation in Africa, particularly on how the power of political elites and of the states they build are constrained or enabled by the concomitant development, or not, of an economic class.