Maya researches the politics of trade union federations and in particular their support for universal public benefits. Her dissertation examined diverging trade union support for public pensions and health insurance at the turn of the twentieth century in the US and the UK. Methodologically, she draws on large scale comparisons that consider processes of state formation and their influence on organisational forms in civil society and industrial relations. Integrating perspectives from organisational sociology, she studies why some forms of working class association perpetuate and thrive within particular social, economic, and institutional contexts—and why others fail.