Heather is now an Emeritus Professor of Economic and Developmental Demography at the Centre for Longitudinal Studies, UCL Social Research Institute. She had been the Director of the Centre for Longitudinal Studies (when it was in the (Institute of Education)from 2003 to 2010, and its Deputy Director from 1994.

Previous employment included City University, the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, Birkbeck College, the  Government Economic Service,  and Oxford University. She graduated from Oxford with a degree in Philosophy, Politics & Economics in 1967 and an M.Litt in Economics in 1970.

She was the President of the European Society for Population Economics in 1996 and of the British Society for Population Studies in 1998-9. She was Co-Chair of the European Child Cohort Network fostering international collaboration and comparison between cohort studies and the founder President of the Society for Longitudinal and Life Course Studies. She is the executive editor of the Society’s journal, Longitudinal and Life Course Studies.

Heather is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences and of the British Academy. She was the chair of Section 4 of the British Academy- Sociology, Demography, Social Statistics, Social Policy, and Criminology from 2019-2021.

She was awarded a CBE in 2015 for services to Longitudinal Studies and Women's Studies  (OBE in 2002).