Small entered the field in the late 1970s working on captive macaques at the California Primate Center in Davis, California, where she received a Ph.D. in 1980. She worked in the anthropological genetics laboratory of David Glenn Smith and spent one year in France studying the mating and mother-infant behavior of Barbary macaques. Small also spent some time in Bali, Indonesia, working on crab-eating or long-tail macaques. In 1988 Small moved to Cornell University where she is currently a professor of anthropology, the first woman in the department to become a full professor.

Small began writing extensively for the popular audience just before her move to Cornell, and by the 1990s, Small shifted into mainstream journalism, writing articles for such publications as Natural History, Discover Magazine, Scientific American and New Scientist. She regards this work as a form of teaching [1].

In 2005, the American Anthropological Association awarded her an Anthropology in Media award for "the successful communication of anthropology to the general public through the media" and for her "broad and sustained public impact at local, national and international levels."

Her articles have twice been in included in The Best Science and Nature Writing series.

From 2007 until 2010 she wrote a weekly column called Human Nature for LiveScience.com and these can still be viewed on line.Today, Meredith Small lives in the small town of Ithaca, NY, Home to Ivy league school Cornell University, which is where she works, teaching anthropology.She lives with her daughter, and her cat, "Munchkin".Meredith writes a blog, in which she writes about the anthropology that pops up in everyday life. It is called "The Anthropology of Every Life" which can be accessed at www.meredithfsmall.wordpress.com. She plans to move to blogspot, soon.