Hughes has been a faculty member at Sam Houston State University (SHSU) in Huntsville TX, where she also served as the Director of Graduate Programs, and was appointed by the Governor of Texas in 2015 to the Texas Forensic Science Commission. She returned to Australia to take up a position as a Senior Lecturer and head of the Forensic Biology Human Identification Laboratory at the University of Queensland. In Fall 2020, Hughes returns to SHSU as an Associate Professor of Forensic Science.