Alison Brading graduated in zoology at the University of Bristol, where she also obtained her Ph.D. Moving to Oxford University in 1965, she was appointed to a University Lectureship in 1972. She has co-edited two books on smooth muscle (with Edith Bülbring and others) and one on women physiologists, with Lynn Bindman and Tilly Tansey. She is also the author of The Autonomic Nervous System and Its Effectors (1999).