Etheridge was educated at Smestow School.[5] She read mathematics in New College, Oxford, earning a bachelor's degree in 1985 and staying on for a year of master's research. After a traveling to McGill University from 1986 to 1987, with the support of the Canadian Rhodes Scholars Foundation, she returned to Oxford as Sir Christopher Cox Junior Fellow and Tutor for Women in New College.[12] She completed a doctorate (DPhil) in 1989[4] for research supervised by David Albert Edwards.[3][13]
Over the course of her career, her interests have ranged from abstract mathematical problems to concrete applications as reflected in her four books which range from a research monograph on mathematical objects called superprocesses to an exploration (co-authored with Mark H. A. Davis) of the percolation of ideas from the groundbreaking thesis of Louis Bachelier in 1900 to modern mathematical finance.[2]
Much of her recent research is concerned with mathematical models of population genetics, where she has been particularly involved in efforts to understand the effects of spatial structure of populations on their patterns of genetic variation.[2]
Etheridge has made significant contributions in the theory and applications of probability and in the links between them.[2] Her particular areas of research have been in measure-valued processes (especially superprocesses and their generalisations); in theoretical population genetics; and in mathematical ecology.[2] A recent focus has been on the genetics of spatially extended populations, where she has exploited and developed inextricable links with infinite-dimensional stochastic analysis.[2] Her resolution of the so-called 'pain in the torus' is typical of her work in that it draws on ideas from diverse areas, from measure-valued processes to image analysis.[2] The result is a flexible framework for modelling biological populations which, for the first time, combines ecology and genetics in a tractable way, while introducing a novel and mathematically interesting class of stochastic processes.[2] The breadth of her contributions is further illustrated by the topics of her four books, which range from the history of financial mathematics to mathematical modelling in population genetics.[2][14]
She is head of the University of Oxford's Department of Statistics, in a three-year post that runs until August 2022.[15] She chairs the Mathematical Sciences sub-panel of the 2021 Research Excellence Framework.[16]
for outstanding research on measure-valued stochastic processes and applications to population biology; and for international leadership and impressive service to the profession.[17]
^Barton, N. H.; Depaulis, F; Etheridge, A. M. (2002). "Neutral evolution in spatially continuous populations". Theoretical Population Biology. 61 (1): 31–48. doi:10.1006/tpbi.2001.1557. PMID11895381.