She is a professor emerita at Syracuse University’s Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs.
She is known for her work on urbanization and the anthropology of space and place in West Africa, particularly in Ghana.
"[1] She is a founding director of the Space and Place Initiative at the Global Affairs Institute at the Maxwell School.
[1] Her research is at the intersection of proxemics, ethnicity, micro-politics and conflict, feminist thought, women and gender.
[1] From 2009 to 2011, she was served as the president of the Society for Urban National and Transnational Anthropology.