[2] She has continued to work in this region, looking at different characteristics of Georgian, Laz, Svan, Mingrelian, Udi, and Batsbi.

Harris also has a strong interest in promoting the larger topic of documenting endangered languages.

She played a key role in establishing the Documenting Endangered Languages (DEL) Program, a granting sub-unit that is part of the National Science Foundation.

[6] She taught at Vanderbilt University from 1979 to 2002, serving as the department chair of Germanic and Slavic Languages there from 1993 to 2002.

She was Professor of Linguistics at SUNY Stony Brook from 2002 to 2009,[7] before taking up a position at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst in 2009 where she remained until her retirement in 2020.