She studies performance and tourism in Latin America and the U.S. Specifically, she focuses on the Afro-Brazilian martial art capoeira and how non-Brazilian practitioners use travel to Brazil to increase their legitimacy within this genre. Her work on capoeira has been published in Annals of Tourism Research, the Journal of Sport and Tourism, and Theatre Annual and she is the author of In Search of Legitimacy: How Outsiders Become Part of the Afro-Brazilian Capoeira Tradition (Berghahn Books 2016). Her second book, titled Apprenticeship Pilgrimage (w/ Jonathan S. Marion), was published in January of 2018 (Lexington Books). Dr. Griffith’s newest work is on the relationship between globalized art forms and locally focused civic engagement.