[1] She was educated at Sir William Perkins's School, Chertsey, Surrey and Birmingham University, where she was taught by Stuart Hall, Richard Hoggart, Malcolm Bradbury, and David Lodge.

Along with Laura Mulvey and Claire Johnston, she was a pioneer of 1970s Anglo-American feminist film theory.

From 1985 to 1994, she was Associate Editor and contributor to the BFI magazines Monthly Film Bulletin and Sight and Sound, before becoming a lecturer at the University of East Anglia.

Since her retirement in 2006, she continues to publish books and articles on moving image history and culture.

In 2007, she set up the independent campaigning blog bfiwatch to monitor developments at the BFI,[4] and she has extended her work to scholarly videography.