Professor Beers's research focuses on modern British and comparative politics. She is particularly interested in the ways in which politics both influences and is shaped by cultural and social life, and in the role of the mass media in modern society. Her most recent book, Orwell’s Ghosts: Wisdom and Warnings for the Twenty-First Century (W.W. Norton/Hurst, 2024) explored the continuing relevance of George Orwell’s writing for understanding our current political moment. Orwell’s Ghosts was awarded the LA Times Book Prize for Biography and the Shorenstein Center’s Goldsmith Prize, and named a book of the year by the New Yorker and the BBC History Magazine. Her previous book Red Ellen: The Life of Ellen Wilkinson, Socialist, Feminist, Internationalist, a history of Britain's second female cabinet minister, was awarded the 2017 Stansky award for best book published in the field of modern British history. She is also the author of Your Britain: Media and the Making of the Labour Party, as well as several journal articles and book chapters, and co-edited, with Dr. Geraint Thomas, Brave New World: Imperial and Democratic Nation-Building in Britain between the Wars. She is currently editing the final volume of the new Cambridge History of Britain, covering the period from 1900 through to the present day, and working on a book on the politics of IVF and surrogacy in the 50 years since the birth of the first IVF baby, funded by a fellowship from the Guggenheim Foundation.

In addition to her academic work, Prof. Beers has written on British and comparative politics for CNN, the Conversation, the Washington Post’s “Made by History” column, the New Statesman, the London Review of Books, and the Times Literary Supplement, and contributed to both current affairs and historical programs on the BBC.