She received her Ph.D. from Harvard University. Ferree studies the politics of democracy, elections, and ethnicity, particularly in the context of the developing countries of Africa. She has done field research in South Africa twice, the results of which are presented in her dissertation, "Voters and Parties in the Rainbow Nation: Race and Elections in the New South Africa." She also is working on several papers that look at the political economy of elections in Africa and has interests in political methodology, particularly ecological inference and time series cross sectional analysis.