Tanya's research is primarily concerned with the legal regulation of sexual ecnounters, particularly through the criminal law. Her current and recent work has therefore covered topics including:

- critiques of the consent standard in sexual offences law
- sex work
- extreme pornography
- the intersection of sexual and domestic abuse
- legal responses to 'rough sex'
- legal responses to 'rape by deception'

Tanya's PhD thesis, which incorporated doctrinal, theoretical and empirical work, interrogated the distinction between sex and sexual violation, and how this distinction can best be represented in the criminal law. Here, she argued for a radical rethinking of the boundary between sex and sexual violation - rejecting the standard of consent in favour of a notion of 'freedom to negotiate'. She has continued to develop this concept in subsequent publications, and is currently working on a monograph entitled Re-Negotiating Sex and Sexual Violation in the Criminal Law.

Another key theme in Tanya's work has been the relationship between sexual violation and coercive control. She developed the concept of 'chronic sexual violation' in order to articulate the ways in which a person's sexual autonomy can be gradually eroded in the context of an ongoing, abusive relationship and to identify this as a distinct, but equally serious form of wrongdoing to 'acute' sexual violations such as rape. See, Tanya Palmer, ‘Failing to See the Wood for the Trees: Chronic Sexual Violation and Criminal Law’ (2020) 84(6) Journal of Criminal Law 573

Tanya was awarded an MSc in Socio-Legal Studies from the University of Bristol, and has an ongoing interest in socio-legal research methodologies. In particular she is interested in combining insights from doctrinal, philosophical and empirical research. She is interested in engaging with 'experts by experience' and in developing 'empirical ethics' approaches developed in the field of Bioethics.

Tanya is keen to supervise PhD/postgraduate research on any aspect of the legal regulation of sexual relationships including rape and sexual assault, heterosexism in law, sex work/prostitution/commercial sexual exploitation, protections and prohibitions affecting the sex lives of disabled people, laws regulating the sex lives of trans people, and legal responses to abuse in relationships.