Specializing in premodern West African history, Professor Ware's research interests include Islam, popular religious culture, and race. His book, The Walking Qur’an Islamic Education, Embodied Knowledge, and History in West Africa (2014), interrogated the role of Islamic education in shaping Muslim identities, and examines the ways in which Qur’anic schools have articulated with Sufi orders, Muslim reformers, and the state in the recent past.