Sutherland was born in
Birmingham; her mother taught geography and her father was a physicist. The family moved to south Wales when she was young, and after attending
Haberdashers' Monmouth School for Girls she became a student at the University of Bristol, where she met and married her husband, mechanical and biomedical engineer Ian Sutherland. She worked briefly as a computer programmer, and then as a researcher at the University of Bristol while her husband completed his doctorate. After she and her family moved to
Hertfordshire, she taught for
The Open University and the Borehamwood College of Further Education. Through her position at The Open University she came to work with
Celia Hoyles, who encouraged her to become an academic researcher in a project combining mathematics education with computer programming in the
Logo programming language. She worked at the
University of London from 1983 until 1995, when she was given a Chair in Education at the University of Bristol. At Bristol, in 1997, she chaired a national committee that helped bring algebra to a more prominent position in secondary-school mathematics education. She was the head of the school from 2003 to 2006, and again in 2014. She also played a key role in improving educational opportunities for underprivileged youth in south Bristol. She died on 26 January 2019. ==Books==