Barbara Schnalzger studied European cultural history in Augsburg and Vienna. She then moved to Leipzig in 2006. She completed the European Studies programme at the University of Leipzig and the University of Wroclaw/Poland.

In 2008, she co-founded the feminist editorial collective "oustide the box - Zeitschrift für feministische Gesellschaftskritik". In 2009/2010, Barbara Schnalzger worked as a cultural editor at Radio Târgu Mureș, Romania. Back in Germany, she worked at the Institute for Higher Education Research in Lutherstadt Wittenberg as part of the "Bundesbericht Wissenschaftlicher Nachwuchs" before becoming managing director of the Leipzig Feminist Library and Archive MONAliesA in 2015. She has been a doctoral candidate at the Institute of Cultural Studies at Leipzig University since 2020. As part of her academic work, she was a Hannelore-Mabry Fellow at the Institute of Contemporary History in Munich in 2022.

Barbara Schnalzger is a member of the working group on historical women's and gender studies and part of the archive and library network of the "i.d.a. umbrella organisation of all German-speaking lesbian/women's archives, libraries and documentation centres". She publishes regularly in "outside the box". She also publishes specialised articles on women's (movement) history. In her doctoral thesis, she is focussing on the history and significance of German-language lesbian/women's archives and libraries from the perspective of the history of knowledge.