She is professor of architecture at the New Jersey Institute of Technology and professor of history at Rutgers University (New Jersey). In particular, she has published The Remaking of Istanbul (University of California Press, 1986), Displaying the Orient (University of California Press, 1992), Empire, Architecture, and the City. French-Ottoman Encounters 1830-1914 (University of Washington Press, 2008) and co-edited the books Walls of Algiers (University of Washington Press, 2009) and Scramble for the Past (SALT, 2011). She has also curated several exhibitions such as ‘Walls of Algiers’ (Getty, Los Angeles, 2009) and ‘Scramble for the Past’ (SALT, Istanbul, 2012).