[2] Barnes holds a bachelor's degree from the Davidson College,[3] where she graduated magna cum laude, and a master's degree and PhD from the University of St Andrews,[4] where she studied under Katherine Hawley and Daniel Nolan.
After graduating from St Andrews, Barnes held posts in the philosophy department at the University of Leeds from 2006, before joining the faculty at Virginia in 2014.
[3][5] Barnes has published across various fields in philosophy,[3] and edited a volume entitled Current Controversies in Metaphysics, which was published with Routledge in 2015.
[6] In 2016, her monograph The Minority Body was published with Oxford University Press.
[7] In the book, Barnes challenges the view of disability common in analytic philosophy, arguing instead that it is primarily a social phenomenon.