Emma has an undergraduate degree, an MPhil and a PhD in History from the University of Cambridge. She spent a year at the Centre of African Studies in Oxford before returning again to Cambridge, this time as Lecturer in History and Fellow of Gonville and Caius College, a post she held from October 2008 until December 2014. During her time in Cambridge she was also actively involved in the Centre of African Studies, as Newton Trust Lecturer in African History from 2010 and as Course Director of the MPhil in African Studies from August 2014.

She joined the School of History, Classics and Archaeology at the University of Edinburgh in January 2015.