Prior to joining the BYU faculty in 1995, she practiced law in Washington, D.C.
Her scholarship focuses on the intersection of citizenship, immigration, gender, and race.
Adams was the associate dean of research and academic affairs in the J. Reuben Clark Law School from 2008 to 2013.
She spent six months in Buenos Aires, Argentina, on a Fulbright Fellowship in 2003.
It is a weeklong experience where a group of students travel to Dilley, Texas, to do immigration work at a detention center for those seeking asylum in the U.S.[1] Adams has published work on immigration and women's issues in early 20th-century Sonora, Mexico.