[4] Clarke matriculated in 1980 to study the Natural Sciences tripos at Clare College, Cambridge where she completed her undergraduate education in 1983.
She was subsequently educated at the University of Oxford where she received a Doctor of Philosophy degree in 1987 for research on binary stars supervised by Geoffrey Bath.
[2] Her doctoral thesis was titled "Accretion disc structure in binary star and galactic potentials".
[2] Clarke studies astrophysical fluid dynamics, including accretion and protoplanetary discs and stellar winds.
The star studied was IM Lupi, which was shown to have a CO (carbon monoxide) halo that extends beyond 1,000 AU.
Clarke's other research interests include self-gravity in disc evolution and formation of brown dwarfs in unstable multiple systems.