Ainsley is the first Daphne Jackson Fellow in Arts and Humanities, funded by the AHRC (2021-23). Her current project explores nineteenth-century Scottish manuscript culture, with a specific focus on the works of Walter Scott and Robert Louis Stevenson. Previously, she has published on nineteenth-century Scottish women's writing and on Walter Scott.

Before joining the School of Literatures, Languages and Culture at Edinburgh, Ainsley held two Research Fellowships at the University of Aberdeen, and continues to be affiliated to the Walter Scott Research Centre there. 

Ainsley's doctorate (2010, University of Aberdeen) offered a model for the first critical edition of Scott's Marmion (1808). For this, she was awarded the inaugural Ross Roy Medal (2010). Her edition of Marmion was published by Edinburgh University Press in 2018, becoming the first of ten volumes of the Edinburgh Editon of Walter Scott's Poetry (EEWSP). Ainsley is currently editing a second volume for the series, Rokeby (1813).

Ainsley has extensive teaching and lecturing experience at pre-University, undergraduate and postgraduate level in seventeenth- to twentieth-century literature. She mentors on the FutureLearn MOOC 'Walter Scott: The Man Behind the Monument'.