In June 1976, she joined the English avant-rock group Henry Cow as bass guitarist and cellist, following the departure of John Greaves.
She also recorded with The Raincoats, and played improvised music with Lol Coxhill, Steve Beresford, David Toop and others as a member of the London Musicians' Collective.
Her first academic job was at Brunel University, where she assisted Roger Silverstone in setting up the degree in Communication and Information Studies.
Derived from fieldwork in the mid-1990s and the early 2000s mainly conducted within the corporation's Drama, Documentary, News and Current Affairs departments, the book adds substance to claims that the BBC has moved towards a market orientation to the detriment of its public service remit.
Born argues that this resulted from a combination of the imposition of neo-liberal policies and wider changes in the British and international broadcasting ecology.
She has subsequently written both policy interventions and normative essays on the changing nature of public service broadcasting with the advent of digital media.
Between 2004 and 2006 Born was involved in research (with Marilyn Strathern and Andrew Barry) on interdisciplinarity in knowledge and cultural production, in which she carried out case studies of the use of ethnography by the IT industry, and on art-science and new media art.
Born has developed an interdisciplinary approach – using anthropology, sociology, musicology and the arts – to theorising cultural and media production that builds on and extends the work of Pierre Bourdieu, one that integrates aesthetics and history with social scientific perspectives.
[11] Born was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2016 Birthday Honours for services to musicology, anthropology, and higher education.