Professor Briggs focuses on linguistic and medical anthropology, social theory, modernity, citizenship and the state, race, and violence. He has studied the tension between modernity and traditionality as socio-political processes in performance, focusing on jokes, proverbs, legends, myths, anecdotes, gossip, curing songs, and ritual wailing, along with how constructions of language and tradition have shaped the politics of modernity. He has conducted research with Latino/a populations in the Southwestern US and in Latin America. Current projects focus on revolutionary health care in Venezuela; how the state is communicated through the press particularly through health issues in Cuba, Venezuela, and the United States; and how violence is projected in legal, media, and medical institutions (Venezuela).