Among other accomplishments Petty has promoted interdisciplinary work, both within the Faculty of Fine Arts and among the broader University community. Along with the Department of Computer Science she established the Undergraduate Digital Media Lab, led the department’s film studies pedagogy review, and led the development of the New Media Studio Laboratory, which received a Canada Foundation for Innovation (CDI) grant.
Academically, as a media theorist, Petty's work encompasses new media, cinema, television narrative and aesthetics, African and African diasporic cinema, television and web texts and post-colonialism. She is a member of the editorial board of the Canadian Journal of Film Studies. She received the Alumni Association award in 2001, and was named as a U of R President’s Scholar in 2002. She appeared in February of 2001 as the Lansdowne Scholar for the Department of French at the University of Victoria. Her other academic credentials include:
Among her notable works is "New Media Narrative On-Line", an ongoing development of an innovative, interdisciplinary introductory course on computer-based narratives. In 1998-2001 she produced "The Archeology of Memory: Transnational Visions of Africa in a Borderless Cinema", an investigation of the connections between African Diaspora and African origin as a transnational relationship. This project resulted in a film exhibition shown at the Dunlop Art Gallery, Regina and the Mount Saint Vincent University Art Gallery, Halifax, as well as a forthcoming book with Wayne State University Press.
"Producing Nations: Identities in National Television Serials" was a 1993-97 research project that resulted in several important contributions to television and African studies, including the published paper "Miseria: Towards an African Feminist Framework of Analysis", as well as an exhibit shown at the Dunlop Art Gallery, Regina.