Gisela Bock studied in Freiburg, Berlin, Paris, and Rome. She received her Ph.D. at the Free University of Berlin (FUB) in 1971 and her Habilitation at the Technical University of Berlin in 1984. From 1971 to 1983 she taught American History at the John F. Kennedy Institute for North American Studies, then history of National Socialism at the Zentralinstitut für sozialwissenschaftliche Forschung, both at the FUB. She was a fellow at the Center for European Studies, Harvard University (1974-75) and at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin (1995-96). She taught European history at the European University Institute in Florence (1985-89), gender history at the University of Bielefeld (1989-1987). Since 1997, she has taught European history at the Department of History of the FUB.
Her books include Die "andere" Arbeitsbewegung in den USA von 1905-1922 : Die Industrial workers of the world (Trikont, 1976),Zwangssterilisation im Nationalsozialismus : Studien zur Rassenpolitik und Frauenpolitik (Westdeutscher Verlag, 1986), and Women in European History (Blackwell Publishers, 2002)