She is trained in anthropology as well as sociology, having gone ABD in anthropology before turning to sociology where she received a Ph.D. in Social Science at the University of California at Irvine. She is known in the discipline as one of a growing group of scholars exploring the interface between evolutionary biology and sociology. Her most important works to date have focused on what knowledge of the evolution of non-human primate social structures can say about human nature, behavior, and social organization. She also has interests in social institutions, particularly kinship and religion, social network analysis, societal evolution, and the history of both sociological and anthropological theory.