She taught political science at the University of New South Wales from 2004-2014, where she also held roles as Senior Associate Dean (2007-2010) and as an Australian Research Council Future Fellow (2011-2014). She joined the University of Melbourne in 2015. In 2018 she co-founded a research unit, the Indigenous-Settler Relations Collaboration, in the Faculty of Arts, which she co-directed with Associate Professor Sana Nakata until 2021. Also with Associate Professor Nakata and with Dr Julia Hurst she edits the Springer book series Indigenous-Settler Relations in Australia and the World. She has published widely in the fields of reconciliation and intercultural relations, settler colonialism, Indigenous politics, gender politics, social movements, and democracy. Her most recent book, The Colonial Fantasy: Why white Australia can't solve black problems, was published by Allen & Unwin in 2019. In 2015 Sarah published Conflict Transformation and Reconciliation (Routledge) based on comparative research in South Africa, Northern Ireland, Australia, and Guatemala, and in 2016 she published the collection (co-edited with Tom Clark and Ravi de Costa) The Limits of Settler Colonial Reconciliation (Springer). Her book Black Politics: Inside the complexity of Aboriginal political culture (2009) was the joint winner of the Henry Mayer Book Prize in 2009. Her other recent books include The Women’s Movement in Protest, Institutions and the Internet (co-edited with Marian Sawer, 2013), Beyond White Guilt (2011), Unsettling the Settler State (co-edited with Morgan Brigg, 2011), and Silencing Dissent (co-edited with Clive Hamilton, 2007). In 2017 Sarah was Visiting Chair of Politics at the University of Cape Town and has previously held visiting positions at the Institute for the Study of Human Rights at Columbia University, the University of Connecticut, The University of Witwatersrand, and the University of Ulster. In 2009 she was awarded a Churchill Fellowship to study models of Indigenous representation in the United States and Canada. Sarah was Deputy Dean of the Faculty of Arts from 2019 to 2021.