Maud's research interests span community ecology, invasion ecology and evolutionary ecology. She is interested in understanding how biological communities assemble in space and time, shaping biodiversity across different scales and influencing ecosystem functioning. Her research combines a theoretical approach of community ecology and functional and evolutionary strategies with a quantitative empirical approach based on field observations and experiments. A plant ecologist at the core, most of her research is on vascular plants. However, she has started expanding her research to different interaction partners, lately working on plant-herbivore interactions. She has worked in a range of systems, from native new zealand forests to urban grasslands, with a recurring focus on semi-natural rangelands.