Black received her undergraduate education at the University of Wyoming, where she also completed fieldwork in the Roman world alongside historical and native American archaeology in Wyoming. Her undergraduate thesis considered issues of Roman identity and so-called “Romanisation.”
Her primary graduate fields of research are in Roman ceramics analysis and the archaeology of the Roman economy; she has worked with the Palatine East Pottery Project (PEPP) since 2013 as well as the Tebtunis and Oxyrhynchos papyri collections at the University of California, Berkeley and University of Oxford.
Black’s secondary field is Persian (especially Parthian through Sasanian) archaeology and art history. Her master’s thesis considered the ivory rhyta (drinking horns) of the Parthian site of Nisa (Turkmenistan) in light of sculptural rhyton fountains from the Gardens of Maecenas in Rome.
She has taught a variety of courses in Classics, History, and History of Art. In spring 2020, Black is teaching for HIST 137AC: The Repeopling of America.
