She has done fieldwork in Indonesia, and she is interested in the following areas: anthropology of reason, biosecurity, post-colonial theory, science studies, nationalism and identity. She earned her PhD from Yale in 1999, and was a visiting scholar in anthropology at U.C. Santa Cruz from 1997-1998. In 2003, she was also a S.V. Ciriarcy Wantrup fellow in Natural Resource Studies at U.C. Berkeley.