Harriet was educated at the University of Nottingham and the University of St Andrews. During her working career she has developed a particular interest in the architectural history of hospital buildings having worked on two national studies, one in Scotland and one in England. She edited English Hospitals 1660-1948, published in 1998, and was the principal author of Building up our Health: the architecture of Scotland’s historic hospitals, published by Historic Scotland in 2010. In 2023 her article on Vale of Leven Hospital was published in Architectural History: the journal of the SAHGB. She also contributed chapters in St Bartholomew’s Hospital 900 Years, Ann Robey ed. London, 2023 and Reconstruction Architecture, Society and the Aftermath of the first World War, Neal Shasore and Jessica Kelly eds. London: Bloomsbury, 2023.

From 1991 to 2018 she was part of the Survey of London team, researching and writing on London's urban history. She contributed to the volumes on Knightsbridge, Clerkenwell, Battersea, South West Marylebone and Oxford Street. Since 2013 the Survey of London has been a part of the Bartlett School of Architecture, and Harriet participated in teaching at the school, on research methods and on the Architecture and Historic Urban Environments MA programme.

During her career she has acquired an extensive experience in archival research into the history and development of a wide range of building types and urban development from the medieval period to the present day. Some areas covered - such as the Harley Street area of Marylebone - included medical buildings, which allowed a continuity of study and research.

In 2019 Harriet was awarded a scholarship on the Doctoral Training Partnership programme of the Scottish Graduate School for Arts and Humanities, funded by the AHRC, to undertake a PhD at ESALA. In 2024 she successfully defended her PhD entitled ‘Medicine and Modernity: Fifty Years of NHS Hospital Building in Scotland 1948-1998’. She is currently working on a book that will develop the arguments in her thesis focusing on the development of hospital design for the welfare state in the United Kingdom.