Nielsen serves on the executive committee of the North American Society for Philosophical Hermeneutics.

[6][7] A common thread in her work is a "hermeneutics of the other," an attempt to enter into dialogue with various "others" (racialized and gendered subjects, artworks, jazz improvisations, literary texts, etc.)

For example, her work on Frederick Douglass and Frantz Fanon analyzes how racialized and colonized subjectivities are constructed and highlights how agents employ various strategies in order to resist, reconfigure, and subvert dehumanizing structures, discourses, and practices.

Her book, Gadamer's Hermeneutical Aesthetics: Art as a Performative, Dynamic, Communal Event (Routledge, 2023), brings Gadamer's hermeneutics into conversation with the practices of Free Jazz, Banksy's street art, and African American artist Romare Bearden.

[16][17] For example, in her review of Nielsen's book, Foucault, Douglass, Fanon, and Scotus in Dialogue, Dr. Renee Harrison, describes Nielsen's work as "a significant interdisciplinary contribution to the fields of philosophy, religion, history, and African American studies.