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Julia Boyd worked at the Victoria and Albert Museum from 1968–1976. During this period she lectured extensively on the decorative arts and contributed to various publications such as the Oxford Companion Guide to the Decorative Arts. In 1975 she published The Story of Furniture (Paul Hamlyn).
Marriage to a diplomat brought an end to her formal career but while living abroad she continued to develop her interest in history and writing. In Hong Kong she contributed to a book on historical walks and reviewed books regularly on the radio.
Her awareness of nineteenth century medical women was triggered in Japan (where her husband was British Ambassador) while researching a book about an idiosyncratic missionary who built a leprosy hospital in Kumamoto: Hannah Riddell, An Englishwoman in Japan (Nikkei, 1995 and Charles Tuttle, 1996).
Since returning to England in 1996, she has lived in Cambridge where her husband is Master of Churchill College.
She is currently working on a biography of Elizabeth Blackwell, the first modern woman to earn a medical degree (1849). In 2003 she gave a lecture on her at Syracuse University, New York, and has been invited to give another in October 2004 at the New York Academy of Medicine.
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