Aja completed her PhD in Anthropology at Syracuse University in 2021, where she concentrated in historical archaeology and cultural heritage preservation. Her dissertation and publications integrate Black feminist and critical race theory with bioarchaeological investigations. In her work, she traces the long history of violence against Black women in the United States by merging skeletal data with archival resources. Her research has been supported by the Smithsonian Institution and the Ford Foundation. Her other interests include the ethics of museum collections, the objectification of human remains, and the history of race.