She has taught architectural, art, landscape, and cultural history at a variety of universities and colleges, among them Cornell University, Binghamton University, and Harvard and in 2001 was invited to the University of Illinois to collaborate in the inauguration of its unique doctoral program in landscape history. Since the publication of her first book, Gardens, Landscape, and Vision in the Palaces of Islamic Spain, Ruggles continues to publish essays and give lectures on the complex cultural conditions that gave rise to the art, architecture, and landscape of the Hispano-Islamic kingdom called al-Andalus.