[definition needed] Her first two books examined the governance of the otherwise in late liberal settler colonies from the perspective of the politics of recognition.

Her second two books, The Empire of Love: Toward a Theory of Intimacy, Genealogy, and Carnality and Economies of Abandonment: Social Belonging and Endurance in Late Liberalism, examine formations of the Late Liberal Anthropocene from the perspective of intimacy, embodiment, and narrative form.

[5] Her books, Geontologies, Between Gaia and Ground, and The Inheritance explore the governance of existence, political identity and the problem of the ancestral.

[11] Povinelli and the Karrabing Indigenous Corporation received the MIFF 2015 Cinema Nova Award for Best Short Fiction Film for When the Dogs Talked.

[21] Povinelli also appeared in the documentary film Apparition of the Eternal Church (2006), directed by Paul Festa, about the French composer Olivier Messiaen's organ work.