Previously, she was a research assistant at Ruhr University Bochum after holding positions at the “Image Knowledge Gestaltung” Cluster of Excellence at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin and the “Imaginaria of Force” research group at Universität Hamburg.
 

As a trained art historian and biologist, her primary research interests include images in the natural sciences and artistic practices of knowledge from the early modern period to the modern era.
In her dissertation, she examined approaches to visual and embodied knowledge production through artistically inspired imaging and modeling in late 19th and early 20th-century British developmental biology. In her current postdoctoral project, she investigates the communication of academic content through design in popular science exhibitions within the context of political conflicts. Another focus of her research is the history of art history from gender and institutional critical perspectives.
 

Beyond her academic work, Chichester has curated research-based exhibitions at museums addressing questions about human-animal relationships around 1900 from the perspectives of animal studies and postcolonial studies. Examples include exhibitions at the Kunstmuseum Bern in 2021 and the Franz Marc Museum in Kochel am See in 2025.