[2] Mitchell is known for her work on ancient Greek politics and kingship.
[3] Mitchell obtained her BA at the University of New England (Australia) and then moved to the UK on a Commonwealth Scholarship in 1991.
[5] She published her thesis as Greeks Bearing Gifts: the public use of private relationships 435-323 BC (Cambridge University Press) in 1997.
Mitchell has been invited to lecture on her work widely, including the 2009 Dorothy Buchan Memorial Lecture at the University of Leicester on Queens and consorts: securing the succession in archaic and classical Greece?,[9] the 2016 Douglas MacDowell Memorial Lecture of the Classical Association of Scotland on Kingship, law and democracy,[10] a lecture on Monarchs in Democracy in 2017 for the Institute of Intellectual History at the University of St Andrews,[11] and a keynote lecture in 2018 at the 18th International Conference for Ancient East-Mediterranean Studies in Tartu (ICAEM 2018) on The politics of power: the rise and fall of the Deinomenid dynasty in fifth-century Sicily.
[12][13] Mitchell encourages wider participation in classical studies through various projects including the creation of Isca Latina, a project for state school students to learn Latin,[14][15] and involvement in the Classical Association South-West Branch's annual Sixth-form Classics Conference.