Blake studies intercultural brokerage, captivity, war, and race in North America and the Atlantic World. Blake is especially interested in the role of violence in relationships between Indigenous people and colonists in the 18th-century Northeast and its continuing implication for the political landscape of the Northeast today.

Blake's dissertation, tentatively titled, “The Death of Jane McCrea: Sovereignty and Revolutionary Violence in the Northeast,” examines the much-publicized death of a single white American colonist during the early years of the American Revolutionary War, its connections to the century of warfare that preceded it and its place within debates about legitimate violence and statehood.

Since coming to Princeton Blake has been an active member of the Princeton American Indian and Indigenous Studies Working Group (PAIISWG), and served as a coordinator for the history department’s Colonial Americas Workshop.