Her interests focus in the intersections of gender, nationalism and war. She is the author of several publications focusing on issues of gender and war in Northern Ireland, feminist geopolitics, and care praxis. Her current research project is a feminist examination of the feminist geopolitics of the Cold War, the War on Terror and The New Military. This research project examines how individual women and men were/are viewed as ethical or deviant as their actions were interpreted by way of adaptation or transgression of the national moral landscape. As part of this analysis Dr. Dowler has conducted extensive interviews with women who trained to be astronauts during the NASA Mercury program, contemporary women firefighters and female soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.