Jill Julius Matthews taught at Flinders, Adelaide, Sydney, and Wollongong universities before being appointed to the Australian National University's Women's Studies Program. She became inaugural Director of the ANU Centre for Women's Studies in 1995. In 1997, she took up an appointment in the History Department. From 2008-10, she was Head of the ANU School of Social Sciences in the Faculty of Arts.
Matthews has been a Convenor of the Australian Network for Research in Women's History, and a Ministerial appointee to the Board of the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia. She has worked with AustLit on her 'Treasures of the Mitchell Library' project.