After a study visit to the Jagiellonian University in Kraków in 1998, she pursued a PhD in East European Languages and Cultures along with Linguistics, which was awarded in 2004; the title of her doctoral dissertation was Degrees of Verb Integration: Conceptualizing and Categorizing Events in Russian.

[1][4] After her doctorate she held postdoctoral positions at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (2004–5) and at KU Leuven (2005–6).

[2] Divjak has served as vice-president (2010–2014) and then president (2014–2017) of the Slavic Cognitive Linguistics Association.

[2] Divjak's research agenda is to achieve a better understanding of how the structures and patterns we observe in language emerge from human and individual cognitive capacities.

[2] Her recent research has received funding from the British Academy and the Leverhulme Trust.