She specializes in the study of material culture, ritual, and personhood in sub-Saharan Africa, most particularly northwest Zambia, and is also interested in issues of representation in ethnography and museum display. She authored Along an African Border: Angolan Refugees and their Divination Baskets (University of Pennsylvania Press, forthcoming) and (in Portuguese and English) A vez dos cestos = Time for Baskets (Ministério da Cultura, Instituto Português de Museus, Museu Nacional de Etnologia, 2003), a book that accompanied an exhibition on Angolan and Zambian basketry held at the National Museum of Ethnology, Lisbon, Portugal.