Dr Strazdins is a Professor and ARC Future Fellow (PhD Psychology, M Clinical Psych) at the National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health, the Australian National University. She is a recognised leader in the field of work, family and wellbeing, especially the role played by work time and the pressures and health challenges for families to combine work with caring, or for young adults to combine work with study. She leads the work and family component of the Federally funded Longitudinal Study of Australian Children, a study of 10,000 families, and has or currently serves as a scientific consultant to Government, including the ACT Health Promotion Branch, the Department of Veteran Affairs Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission and the Defence forces and a consultant to the Paid Parental Leave Evaluation. She also collaborates with National NGO organisations regarding social policy for Australian families. In 2011 Strazdins was awarded an Australian Research Council Future Fellowship investigating time as a resource for health.

Her research focuses on contemporary predicaments of work and care and their health and gender equity consequences, viewing health as inter-linked within families. More recently she has been leading theory and evidence on time as a social determinant of health, viewing time as a resource, like money, which underpins inequality and is fundamental for peoples' capacity to be healthy. Her most recent work explores the concept of the Hour Glass Ceiling, a form of workplace discrimination based on time and excessive availability.