Barbara Prainsack is a Reader (Associate Professor) at the Department of Social science, Health & Medicine at King's College London; a Honorary Senior Research Associate at the Department of Twin Research and Genetic Epidemiology at St. Thomas' Hospital, King's College London, and a Visiting Professor at the Centre for Biomedicine & Society at Brunel University. A political scientist by background, Barbara has published widely on the societal, regulatory, and ethical dimensions of biomedicine and bioscience.

In 2011-2012, she chaired the ESF 'Forward Look on Personalised Medicine for the European Citizen' together with Stephen Holgate and Aarno Palotie. Barbara is also a member of the Austrian National Bioethics Commission, and of the British Royal Society of Arts. She is on the advisory board of several journals including Personalized Medicine, OMICS, New Genetics & Society, and Science as Culture, and senior editor of the 2nd edition of the International Encyclopedia of Social and Behavioral Sciences.