With degrees in psychology and politics, Traudi worked as a BBC documentary researcher on location in Australia, and then with the ABC TV features department. As a researcher with the current affairs television programme This Day Tonight, she made occasional on-air contributions, including one on an exhibition by the Melbourne artist Clifton Pugh that resulted in a biography.
After taking postgraduate degrees in art history, she went on to write further art books, while contributing art interviews and documentaries to ABC Radio National, ABC FM and Radio Australia for over twenty years.
Along with many reviews, articles and exhibition essays, she produced a series of videos on the subjects of women’s art & feminism, the art of Arthur Boyd, Roar Studios, The Annandale Imitation Realists and the art of Brett Whiteley that have been used widely as educational resources in schools across Australia.
She has lectured at RMIT, as well as at Monash University where she established the first Australian tertiary course on contemporary art of the Asia-Pacific.
She is now a full-time writer, and as Dr. Traudi Allen is an affiliate with the School of Languages, Literatures, Cultures and Linguistics at Monash University.
John Perceval, Traudi Allen, Clifton Pugh, unknown, at the Pugh House at Cottlesbridge c. 1984. Photograph and cake: Adriane Strampp