Dr Uschi Klein studied media studies and linguistics at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand, where she lived and (following her degree) worked as a media advisor in the charity sector. After relocating to London in 2010, Uschi returned to higher education to do her master’s at Goldsmiths College, University of London. Although Uschi developed an interest in practicing photography in the early 1990s, it was not until her MA that she formally studied photography. It was also halfway through her MA that Uschi decided to do a PhD and start an academic career. Dr Klein's critique of the charity sector, in specific its use of imagery, led to her PhD thesis entitled Seeing self and world: everyday photographic practices of young male adults with Autism Spectrum Disorder, which she completed at University of Brighton in late 2017.

In 2020, as a result of pure serendipity and a personal interest in communist Romania, Uschi started exploring vernacular photography as a form of cultural resistance during Romania's communist era (1947-1989). In 2020 and 2021, Uschi won two small international research grants, the Peter E. Palmquist Memorial Fund Research Grant and the 10x10 Research Grant on Photobook History, respectively. The grants enabled her to carry out initial archival research in Bucharest, Romania, which resulted in an open-access publication and two international conference papers.

Dr Uschi Klein has been a module leader for a range of UG and PGR modules at UoB since 2017. In that capacity, Uschi has designed different teaching and learning materials and delivered teaching content in person and remotely (during the pandemic) to UG and PGR students on different courses within the broad and overlapping subject areas of contemporary art and visual culture, art history and media studies across the School of Art and Media and on the History of Art and Design programme in the School of Humanities and Social Science.