Her work at the Centre focuses on the implications of “inflection points" or what Stockholm Resilience Centre terms “regime changes" in the historical record. She leads a research group who studies long term landscape change in Burgundy (France).  Since 1975 she has traced the region´s economy over the past 2500 years, from Iron Age (Celtic) farmers, pastoralists, and metallurgists to contemporary cattle and steel producers. A second project takes as a starting point contemporary French agriculture which has revealed that historically resilient farms and landscapes are losing the biodiversity and practical knowledge that ensures their long-term survival.  

She holds a doctorate in anthropology from the University of Wisconsin Madison USA), an M.A. in archaeology from the University of Calgary Alberta, Canada), and a B.A. in anthropology from the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor USA).  She has specialized training in environmental science (geology, ecology, climatology), and in classical studies.

Within her discipline, she is a pioneer in the practice of historical ecology and landscape archaeology; her theoretical contributions include the introduction of the concept of heterarchy and the advancement of complex systems research in the social sciences. She has been Secretary of the American Anthropological Association (AAA) and is a founding past President of the Anthropology and Environment Section of the AAA. She has served the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme (IGBP) in several capacities.  She is, or has been, a member of the Scientific Steering Committees of two Core Projects, Past Global Changes (PAGES) and Analysis and Integrated Modeling (AIMES) and the U.S. National Committee for DIVERSITAS, a program linking biology, ecology and the social sciences to foster global biodiversity.

She shares leadership of a new AIMES initiative, the Integrated History and Future of People on Earth (IHOPE), which facilitates integration of Earth system history with that of the human species.