Kerry Walker completed her undergraduate studies in her native Newfoundland (BSc hon., Memorial University), an MSc in Nova Scotia (Dalhousie University), and then her doctoral degree at Brasenose College, Oxford (DPhil, University of Oxford). She worked as a Postdoctoral Researcher for Prof Andrew King in the Auditory Neuroscience Group for 3 years. She then started an independent research lab as an DPAG Early Career Research Fellow, and she is now a University Research Lecturer.
Her group's research examines the brain processes that allow humans and other animals to understand sounds, particularly communication calls. It aims to identify the spiking events in auditory cortical neurons that form the brain's representations of various features of sounds. These features include: "pitch", which is the sound's tonal quality; the location of the sound source in space; the spectral characteristics we use to identify the sound source (e.g. a violin versus a piano); and the temporal properties of the sound, such as rhythm.