She studied at Roedean School, and went on to graduate in French, Italian and Spanish, at Westfield College.
She supported a children's home at Dmitrov, and helped restore the ruined Tolga monastery as a nunnery in Yaroslavl.
Her thesis on face pots in Roman Britain was published in the journal Britannia, and she received a first class degree.
[5] Braithwaite's main contribution to the field was the establishment of a typology and a chronology for Roman face pots.
As part of her research, she catalogued sherds and pots obtained from across Europe – from the Black Sea to Iberia, and southern Italy to Scotland.
[2] She showed that the faces were not mass-produced from moulds, but rather the potters added them after the pots were made, and shaped them according to their personal whim or local fashion.