Her creative and research interests focus on international photojournalism, American studies ethnography, and editorial photography. She is the author of the 2006 book Mennonites in Texas: The Quiet in the Land (Texas A&M University Press), and her photographic collection is archived at the University of Texas at Austin’s Briscoe Center for American History. She has been an award-winning professional photojournalist for the past twenty years, covering such events as the 2000 presidential campaign of George W. Bush for Reuters News Pictures in Washington, DC. Before coming to NAU, she taught at the University of Montana and the University of Texas at Austin. Laura completed a documentary project based on fieldwork that she and her students conducted at the Mainpat Tibetan Refugee Settlement in northern India in December 2012.