She was the inaugural Richard Lyman Bushman chair of Mormon studies at the University of Virginia from 2013 until her retirement in 2024.

[3] Flake was previously a professor of American religious history at the Divinity School and Graduate Department of Religion at Vanderbilt University.

She also studies constructive function of text and ritual in maintaining and adapting the identity and gendered power structures of religious communities.

Flake is a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and served a mission in Japan.

Senator Jeff Flake of Arizona; they share a great-grandfather, William J.