She has two brothers, Robert and Timothy Hawking, and was raised in Cambridge after a few years spent in Pasadena, California, as a child.

[7] She wrote for New York magazine, the Daily Mail, The Telegraph, The Times, the London Evening Standard,[8] and The Guardian.

[11] The result was Principia Space Diary, developed with Kristen Harrison at Curved House Kids with expert input from Professor Peter McOwan at Queen Mary University of London.

It reached over 60,000 students in the UK[12] and was nominated for a Sir Arthur Clarke Award for Excellence in Space Education by the British Interplanetary Society.

This experience shaped her perspective on using methods of entertainment, such as children's literature and adventure films, to engage the new generation on "post-truth" politics and scientific understandings.

In April 2008, Hawking participated in NASA's 50th birthday lecture series, contributing a talk on children and science education.

[17] In 2013, Hawking spoke at the BrainSTEM: Your Future is Now festival at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada.

[19] In June, Hawking was recognized at the Amsterdam News Educational Foundation, which honoured her and two other women rising in the field of science.