She was the first female full-time academic staff member in the School of Architecture and Planning at the Waipapa Taumata Rau the University of Auckland in New Zealand.

[4] Treadwell completed her PhD in 1995 in the field of New Zealand architectural history, looking specifically at Rangiatea, the Māori Church at Ōtaki that was destroyed by fire in 1995.

[5] She delivered the sixth Gordon H. Brown Art History lecture at Victoria University of Wellington in 2008, titled Rangiatea Revisited.

Her thesis, titled Keeping watch: fabricating a space of hesitation involved the production of artwork around the MV Rena striking the Astrolabe Reef in 2011.

[1] Research Treadwell conducted with Nicole Allan in 2012 found that from 2002 to 2011 only 19 per cent of contributors to Architecture New Zealand were women, with a similar bias in the names listed in project credits.

"[10][11][1] In 2017, the A+W NZ Tātuhi/Drawing Architecture archive was set up by Lynda Simmons to honour Treadwell's impact and career, it being the year of her retirement.