Claire's main field experience is in Indigenous archaeology. She has conducted fieldwork in the Barunga-Wugularr region of southern Arnhem Land, Australia, since 1990, and returns to do fieldwork there every year.

Claire's books include Indigenous Cultures in an Interconnected World (co-edited with Graeme K. Ward, Allen and Unwin 2000), Country, Kin and Culture. Survival of an Australian Aboriginal Community (Wakefield Press 2004), Indigenous Archaeologies: Decolonising Archaeological Theory and Method (co-edited with H. Martin Wobst, Routlege, 2005), and several versions of The Archaeologist's Field Handbook (Australian version with Heather Burke, Allen and Unwin, 2004; Spanish version with Ines Domingo Sanz and Heather Burke, Arial 2007; and North American version with Heather Burke and Larry Zimmerman, AltaMira Press, 2009).

A paper by the new President on her vision for the World Archaeological Congress is published in Antiquity.