Professor Bolten is a development anthropologist whose interests range from understanding youth participation in political elections to the politics of chimpanzee conservation in unprotected forest fragments. She has worked in Sierra Leone since 2003, and from 1996-2002 worked in Botswana. She teaches in both the anthropology program and in the Joan B. Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, is also a fellow in the Kellogg Institute for International Studies, and is a concurrent Assistant Professor in Africana Studies