She has been a professor of City and Regional Planning and Distinguished Chair in Global Poverty and Practice at the University of California, Berkeley.

She also served as Education Director of the Blum Center for Developing Economies, where she was the founding chair of the undergraduate minor in Global Poverty and Practice at UC Berkeley.

Her undergraduate course, "Global Poverty: Challenges and Hopes in the New Millennium," drew 700 students each Fall at UC Berkeley.

The primary book award in urban planning, the Davidoff prize "recognizes an outstanding book publication promoting participatory planning and positive social change, opposing poverty and racism as factors in society and seeking ways to reduce disparities between rich and poor; white and black; men and women.

"[8] Roy has argued that microfinance is an instrument of financial inclusion, a part of the "democratization of capital," but also that it is potentially a new global subprime market, one in which debt is securitized and traded [9] In a recent special issue of Public Culture, which she guest-edited, Roy highlights the making of poverty capitalism and markets in humanitarian goods [10] Her work contrasts such approaches with poverty interventions that are concerned with social protection and the transformation of inequality.

Together with the UCLA Abolitionist Planning Group, Roy created a resource guide titled “Abolitionist Planning for Resistance” that frames key issues around which to mobilize political action such as civil liberties, policing, housing rights, union labor, sanctuary cities, and environmental justice.