[citation needed] Connelly's scholarship focuses on Greek art, myth, and religion, and includes a groundbreaking reinterpretation of the Parthenon and its sculptures.

[10][11] Phi Beta Kappa society honored The Parthenon Enigma in 2015 with the Ralph Waldo Emerson Award for its significant contribution to the humanities.

[12] A cultural historian, Connelly has examined topics ranging from female agency, to ritual space, landscape, life cycles, identity, reception, and complexity.

A field archaeologist, Connelly has worked at Corinth, Athens, and Nemea in Greece, at Paphos, Kourion, and Ancient Marion in Cyprus, and on the island of Failaka off the coast of Kuwait.

Here, she has pioneered eco-archaeology, undertaking floral and faunal surveys, annual bird counts, and establishing guidelines sensitive to the ways in which archaeological intervention impacts the natural environment.

In collaboration with architect Demetri Porphyrios, Connelly submitted a proposal for the World Trade Center Site Memorial Competition in 2003.

[23] In 2008, she appeared in Indiana Jones: The Ultimate Quest (The History Channel, Lucasfilm and Prometheus Entertainment), in which she discussed new technologies in field archaeology, the importance of stratigraphic context, and the global illicit antiquities market.

In April 2015, renowned physicist Freeman Dyson told The New York Times Sunday Book Review that Joan Breton Connelly was one of the three writers he would invite to a literary dinner party, along with Kristen R. Ghodsee and Mary Doria Russell.