Dr Cherie Allan was a teacher of English, Geography, History and SOSE over a period of approximately 20 years. During that time she taught in state, independent and Catholic schools across Queensland, and in Adelaide and Melbourne. Following this she completed a Graduate Diploma of Education in Teacher-Librarianship (QUT) in 2000 and worked briefly as a teacher-librarian. Allan has since completed both a Masters of Education (USQ) and a PhD (QUT) in the field of children's literature. She worked as a Research Assistant on two AustLit subsets: Children's Literature Digital Resources and Asian-Australian Children's Literature and Publishing Projects, as part of a team at Queensland University of Technology (QUT). She has worked as a lecturer in Children's and Young Adult Literature and Youth Popular Culture (QUT). Her book, Playing with Picturebooks: Postmodernism and the Postmodernesque (2012), was awarded the International Research Society for Children’s Literature’s (IRSCL) Honor Book Award in 2013
