Blair has over 10 years of research experience in understanding and addressing obstacles in service delivery in government agencies and humanitarian organizations, particularly focusing on refugee populations. She has led large, mixed methods research projects on the economic impact of forced displacement, designing and implementing research strategy and data analysis and developing data-driven recommendations. She is first author of the book We Thought It Would Be Heaven: Refugees in an Unequal America (University of California Press), with Annette Lareau, which reveals the obstacles that resettled refugees face in accessing social services and economic resources in the United States. As the principal investigator, she also led a study on the barriers to economic development in a context of protracted humanitarian crises in Kakuma refugee camp in Kenya. She has taught courses and led workshops on global migration policy and on social inequality at Brown University and the University of Pennsylvania. Her research has been supported by the Fulbright-Hays DDRA Fellowship and U.S. Department of Education Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowships and covered by media outlets, including NPR’s Planet Money.

She completed a Ph.D. in Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania and B.A. in Urban Studies and African and African American Studies at Washington University in St. Louis.