Sue Gallagher's research expertise in critical spatial practice draws from architecture, performance design, installation practice, and focuses on material imagination, spatial narrative, embodied drawing, queer aesthetics, and counter-dwelling. Gallagher's Ph.D. thesis published in 2020 'Home-body: A spatial inquiry into queer material imagination' considered dwelling by way of topoanalysis, itself rethought through a queer materialist imagination. Utilising drawing, digital video-making, and installation practice, the interrelationships between home, self and city were explored.

Key research initiatives which have developed from the Ph.D. research include an upcoming commissioned solo exhibition at St Paul St Gallery in September 2023; the Material Imaginaries Research Collective, established in 2021; and lastly, a renovation to Gallagher's home environment to support a media art and architecture exhibition site in the Dilworth Building (opening late 2023).

Gallagher is the Programme Director of the Master of Design and Senior Lecturer in Spatial Design at AUT School of Art and Design.