Rebecca Harris-Warrick brings to her primary specialization in the field of French Baroque music an interdisciplinary background in musicology, performance, dance history, and literature. Her research also extends beyond the Baroque into later periods of operatic history, particularly in France, and she has prepared critical editions of theatrical works by Gaetano Donizetti and Jean-Baptiste Lully. In addition to her musicological work she has performed as a Baroque flutist and studied both Renaissance and Baroque dance. As a result, much of her scholarly work has been informed by her interests in performance and performance practice and, conversely, some of her research has been brought into practice on the stage, such as in productions of Baroque operas at the Boston Early Music Festival. She is currently a member of the editorial boards for the Les Oeuvres complètes de Jean-Baptiste Lully and the Journal of the Society for Seventeenth-Century Music, and has served on the Council of the American Musicological Society (1995-98), the Board of Directors and Editorial Board of the Society of Dance History Scholars (1993-99), and as Associate Editor of the Cambridge Opera Journal (1998-2003). Her research has been supported by fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities (1985, 1991), the Mellon Foundation (1989), and the Guggenheim Foundation (2001).

At Cornell Rebecca Harris-Warrick teaches music history for non-majors (e.g., Mozart to Minimalism, Opera, the Choral Tradition) and music majors (survey of Western music from the Middle Ages to the Baroque), as well as graduate musicology seminars, freshman writing seminars, early dance classes, and chamber music. She served for six years as Director of Graduate Studies and chaired the Department of Music from 2002 through 2005 and from 2006 through 2008.