Lucia has been working in academic literacy teaching, research and development since the mid 1980s. She convenes a Masters option on academic literacies in the School of Education, and initiated the Postgraduate Literacies Project, with links across CHED.

She co-authored (with Ermien van Pletzen) Academic Literacy and the Languages of Change (2006, London, Continuum), and is grant holder for the Carnegie-funded international research project 'Postgraduate writing, risk and the making of new knowledge', part of UCT's African Knowledge project. She is co-authoring a book on this research with Linda Cooper.