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Sunday joined Southern Methodist University as a Visiting Assistant Professor after receiving her Ph.D. from the University of Michigan in 2006. With a specialization in Archaeology, she has studied in numerous geographic regions including Mexico, the U.S. Southwest, California, and the Great Basin. Her research interests include archaeological ceramics and pottery manufacturing, the historical archaeology of Native People of the Southwest, and the effects of Colonialism on Indigenous cultural identities and traditions in the Spanish Borderlands region. Some of her other interests include Archaic Period and Historic Period Rock Art as these relate to symbolic landscape ideologies and oral history.

Over the past nine years, she has worked with numerous micaceous potters in New Mexico to study traditional clay prospecting, harvesting, and production techniques, and she has conducted an extensive micaceous clay source survey with the help of these potters. This survey included geochemical testing of clay source and ceramic samples to reveal the complex development of New Mexico’s micaceous pottery tradition from A.D. 1300 to the present as well as the role of female labor in sustaining household economies.

This work includes a special interest in the transformation of micaceous pottery from a humble culinary ware - traded largely between rural women during the historic era - to its spectacular entry into the modern Art Market during the late 1990s. A special interest in ceramics and archaeology have allowed her to examine issues of multiculturalism in the Spanish borderlands including the impact of colonization on the Jicarilla Apache and other mounted horse nomads of the region from an archaeological perspective. As one of the leading experts on micaceous pottery of the northern Rio Grande, she has assisted in cases involving Pueblo rights to traditional clay pits threatened by industrial mining.