Her earliest studies were at the Cleveland Music School Settlement, where she learned piano from Jonas Svedas and composition from Bain Murray.
She is at work in the development of the Smithsonian Folkways Recordings certification courses in World Music Pedagogy for educators in elementary, secondary, and tertiary-level teaching, where she serves as chair of the SFR Advisory Board.
She is an active contributor to the dissemination of field recordings of Alan Lomax through her design of lessons for the Association for Cultural Equity.
Her teaching and scholarship converge on questions of how music is transmitted, acquired, and created in contexts close to and distant from traditional practices of American educational institutions.
Campbell has given numerous named lectures as well as clinical presentations throughout North America, in much of Europe and Asia, in Australia, New Zealand, and parts of South America and South Africa on traditional songs and singing styles, the pedagogy of world music, children's musical cultures, and curricular traditions and transformations in universities and schools.