Petà Dunstan took both her first degree and PhD at Clare College, Cambridge. She is a modern church historian and a member of the Faculty of Divinity, where she was the Faculty Librarian. Her main area of research is Anglican Religious communities. Her publications include a history of the Society of St Francis, This Poor Sort and of the Anglican Benedictines, The Labour of Obedience.  More recently she published a biography of Dorothy Buxton, a 20th-century campaigner and a founder of the charity Save the Children, called Campaigning for Life. In College, she has been a tutor since the 1990s, as well as being Fellow Librarian, Tutor and has served on Council and other committees.