Before moving to London, Gaye worked as a Member of the National Native Title Tribunal in Australia and prior to that in curatorial positions at Museums Victoria, Melbourne and, many years ago, at the National Museum of Australia. In 2015 she curated the exhibition ‘Indigenous Australia: enduring civilisation’ at the British Museum. Since then she has been working with Aboriginal communities and university colleagues in Australia on several Australian Research Council-funded projects including ‘The Relational Museum and its Objects’; ‘Collecting the West: how collections create Western Australia’, and ‘Mobilising Aboriginal Objects in International Museums’. These recent and ongoing projects focus on uncovering and making known historic collections of Aboriginal cultural material in the United Kingdom and Ireland.  In 2021, her book, co-edited with Maria Nugent and Howard Morphy of the Australian National University, Ancestors, artefacts, empire: Indigenous Australia in British and Irish Museums was published by British Museum Press. Her work in this area was acknowledged in 2021 by her election as an Honorary Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities.