Her research interest is in astroparticle physics: the interface between astrophysics and particle physics, where the goal is to learn about the fundamental constituents of matter using the universe as a laboratory. She earned a BSc Hons from the University of Canterbury and DPhil in theoretical physics from Oxford University, where she was awarded a Rhodes scholarship to study in 1992. She then became a Post Doctoral Fellow at Uppsala University in Sweden, before returning to the University of Canterbury in 1998.