Her research focuses on the influence of varied social contexts on youth civic identity development and on the implications of digital media for positive youth development. She competed her Ph.D. from UC Berkeley in Human Development & Education in 2009. Her dissertation was titled "Adolescent Reasoning about Civic and Political Engagement." Her recent publications include U Suk! Participatory media and youth experiences with political discourse in Youth & Society (Middaugh, Bowyer & Kahne, 2016), The Social and Emotional Components of Gaming (Middaugh, 2016) and Youth comprehension of political messages in YouTube videos (Bowyer, Kahne & Middaugh, 2015). She previously served as Research Director for the Mills College Civic Engagement Research Group.