[8][4] In 1973, she earned a Bachelor of Arts degree with Honours in Experimental Psychology from St Hugh's College, Oxford.

[9] After her MPhil, she returned to Oxford to work with Freda Newcombe[10] at the Neuropsychology Unit in Radcliffe Infirmary.

[1] Dorothy Bishop was Professor of Developmental Neuropsychology at the University of Oxford[19] where, funded by the Wellcome Trust, she led a series of research of children's communication disorders.

In this particular project, Bishop was attempting to define a set criteria for identifying children who may need intervention through a multinational and multidiscipline study.

[28] Bishop was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 2014 for "substantial contributions to the improvement of natural knowledge".

Her nomination read:[6] Dorothy Bishop is the leading researcher on developmental disorders affecting language and communication.

She has devised measures that differentiate types of language impairment and are now indispensable for both research and clinical diagnosis.

By comparing and contrasting dyslexia, specific language impairment and autism, Bishop has challenged views of these as discrete conditions, and illuminated what is shared and distinctive about each disorder.On 25 November 2024, Bishop announced that she had resigned from the Royal Society because Elon Musk was also a member, and she no longer wanted to share this affiliation in view of his anti-scientific statements.

The award includes a small financial contribution and also what they call a "Doscar", which is a Lego minifigure of Dorothy Bishop.