Barbara Brook began teaching gender studies at Victoria University (formerly Victoria University of Technology) in the early 1990s. She has an MA from Sussex University and she completed a PhD on Charles Dickens at the Australian National University in 1976. She has written widely on gender issues, with a particular emphasis on the body, as seen in her Feminist Perspectives on the Body (1999). Brook was also editor of the Australian Women's Book Review from 1992-1999.