[2] She studied descriptive geometry at the University of Belgrade before moving to England in 1991 during the Breakup of Yugoslavia and ensuing Yugoslav Wars, and later becoming a naturalized British citizen.
Her dissertation, Geometry of Architecture and Freemasonry in 19th Century England, was supervised by Jeremy Gray.
[4] While working as a secondary school teacher at St Edmund's Catholic School, Dover in 2004–2005, she won a Gatsby Teacher Fellowship in Mathematics, with which she started a popular web site "Maths is Good For You".
The site had the aim of providing a resource to bring more work on the history of mathematics into the secondary school curriculum.
[9] Lawrence is a Fellow of the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications, for whom she was Diversity Champion 2019-2023 and is an elected council member.