After receiving her BA (Hons) in Archaeology, Duckworth was awarded funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council to study for an MSc and subsequently a PhD at the University of Nottingham.

[1] Her PhD, awarded in 2011, was supervised by Julian Henderson and was titled The created stone: chemical and archaeological perspectives on the colour and material properties of early Egyptian glass, 1500–1200 B.C..[2] Duckworth joined Newcastle University in 2016,[3] following her position at the University of Leicester as a postdoctoral researcher on European Research Council funded Trans-Sahara project.

[8] She is a member of the editorial board of World Archaeology journal,[9] and an external examiner for the University of Oxford.

[10] She is also a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy[10] and a Member of the Chartered Institute for Archaeologists.

In 2017 she was part of the BBC Expert Women[14] and in 2019 was a presenter at the New Scientist Live Show.