She holds a Ph.D. from Cornell University and specializes in Modern European History, with an emphasis on France and the French Empire, gender and sexuality, and intellectual, cultural, and legal History. Her research and teaching range across the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, examining questions of sex and citizenship, colonialism and postcolonial migration, as well as critical theory and historical methodology. She is currently completing her book, Scandalous Subjects: Sex, Law, and Sovereignty in French Algeria, 1830-1930, which explores how ideas about sex and gender shaped approaches to law and public order in French Algeria.