Her PhD is from the University of Sydney and the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, The Netherlands. She has been involved with Lajamanu Community since 1998, first working in the Two-way Learning program in the school (1998-2001), and since then visiting annually for research. Before going to Lajamanu Community she spent two years in a Kriol-speaking community, Ngukurr, as a lecturer with Batchelor Institute of Indigenous Tertiary Education (BIITE), working in teacher education (1996-7). She was an ESL and elementary school teacher for several years prior to that.