Her research interests include power, religion, sectarianism, and gender in the Middle East. She has written about Muslim-Christian relations in contemporary Egypt, and her current research examines how the 2011 Egyptian Arab Uprisings have affected the sectarian relations from an intersectional approach, or the consideration of class, gender, and geography. Trained as an ethnographer, she has conducted field research in Cairo, Egypt, from 2006. Her work has appeared in Ethnic and Racial Studies, Research in Social Movements, Conflicts, and Changes, and Education and the Arab Spring: Resistance, reform, and democracy (edited volume), among others. Her teaching interests at Duke Kunshan include social theories, social problems, identity and emotions, and religion and politics in the Middle East.

Ha holds a B.A. in Arabic from Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, South Korea, an M.A. in sociology from Seoul National University, and a doctorate in sociology from the University of Texas, Austin. Before joining Duke Kunshan, she held a Global Religion Research Initiative postdoctoral position at the Center for the Study of Religion and Society, University of Notre Dame, and received a visiting scholar fellowship from Seoul National University Asia Center in 2020.