After obtaining her PhD in 1977, Al-Gailani remained in London as an honorary research associate at the UCL Institute of Archaeology and a research associate at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS). She returned to Iraq frequently, working to maintain contact between Iraqi archaeologists and the wider academic world under the Saddam Hussein regime. In 1999, she and Salim al-Alusi co-authored "The First Arabs", a popular account in Arabic of the archaeology of early Arab culture in Mesopotamia. From 2003, her work focused on the preservation of antiquities in Iraq. She helped rebuild the Iraq Museum after it was looted and damaged in the 2003 American-led invasion and was a frequent commentator on the difficulties faced by museums and heritage protection in postwar Iraq. She was a consultant to the Iraqi Ministry of Culture and was closely involved in the reopening of the Iraq Museum in 2015 and the founding of the Basrah Museum in 2016.