Maddison has a PhD in the Discipline of Government and International Relations at the University of Sydney.
[citation needed] She has been an ARC Discovery Project grant recipient for three completed projects, one considering new possibilities for Indigenous representation (DP0877157), and another considering the evolution of social movements through a study of the Australian women’s movement (DP0878688 with Professor Marian Sawer, ANU), which produced the edited collection The Women's Movement in Protest, Institutions and the Internet: Australia in transnational perspective.
The third project 2014, undertaken with colleagues in Melbourne and Canada, explored non-Indigenous attitudes to reconciliation with Indigenous peoples, through focus group research around the country.
[citation needed] In 2010 Maddison was awarded an Australian Research Council Future Fellowship to undertake a four-year, four-country comparative study of reconciliation and conflict transformation in Australia, South Africa, Northern Ireland and Guatemala.
[2] Maddison received a 2009 Churchill Fellowship to study models of Indigenous representation in the United States and Canada in 2010.