She attended the Justus-Liebig-Universität Gießen and wrote her Doctor of Philosophy thesis on "2-Hauptblöcke von Gruppen mit Dieder-Gruppen als 2-Sylow-Gruppen" (Principal 2-blocks of groups with dihedral Sylow 2-subgroups) in 1976 under the direction of Gerhard O. Michler.
She is notable for her work in modular representation theory which has been cited over 500 times according to the Mathematical Reviews. She has contributed to the understanding of the representation theory of the symmetric group. She is a university lecturer at the Mathematical Institute at the University of Oxford where she has had 21 doctoral students and 29 descendants.
She has published over 75 papers and her work has been cited over 500 times.
