She received her PhD from the University of Pennsylvania, and is the author of a new book Childbirth, Maternity and Medical Pluralism in French Colonial Vietnam, 1880-1945 (University of Rochester Press, 2016). She is currently working on a project on the transnational history of coal mining and revolution in northern Vietnam. This project explores the French discovery and exploitation of coal mines in Tonkin and the impact of the coal industry on the local communities and environment, labor, the economy, and the larger revolutionary movements in Vietnam.