[4] She then completed a PhD at the University of Queensland in 2013 in Cynthia Riginos's lab, with Hugh Possingham, and Eric Treml as additional supervisors, using mitochondrial and microsatellite markers to study the colonisation and dispersal of marine fishes and echinoderms around coral reefs of Australia and the West Pacific.
[1] Liggins was a Graduate Fellow at the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center in Durham, North Carolina from March to August 2014, working with the "Advancing genetic diversity research in the Indian and Pacific Oceans" group.
[8][6] In 2020, Liggins received a five year Rutherford Discovery Fellowship to work on a project titled Tohu of change for Aotearoa New Zealand’s marine biodiversity, based at Massey University.
[9] Liggins has spoken out against proposed cuts to science research at Massey University's Albany campus, in which 50 staff jobs were under threat, and some majors such as marine biology were to be discontinued.
[13] The observations were captured in hundreds of hours of unused underwater footage recorded in 2015, from a wildlife documentary being filmed while Liggins and her colleagues were on an expedition to the Kermadecs to collect DNA samples.