Barbara Gillam was born in Sydney, Australia, and educated at the University of Sydney and the Australian National University. She moved to New York, becoming a research associate at Columbia University and later professor of vision sciences at SUNY College of Optometry. Gillam returned to Australia in 1987 to take up the Chair of Psychology at the University of New South Wales, where she is still a professor. Awards she has received include a Guggenheim Fellowship, a UNSW Scientia Professorship, a residency at the Rockefeller Foundation (Bellagio) and the 2010 Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award of the Australian Psychological Society. She has been on many grant-awarding bodies in the United States and Australia and is a consulting editor for the journal Perception.