Between 2001 and 2010 Van den Brink combined her academic work with the membership of the national equal treatment body (Commissie gelijke behandeling, now the national Human Rights Institute). Previously she worked at Leiden Law School and at the national advisory council for emancipation policies.

She was an editor of Nemesis, a journal on women and law, between 1996 and 2001; and between 2006 and 2009 she was one of the editors fo the interdisciplinary Tijdschrift voor Genderstudies.

She defended her Ph.D thesis (Mothers in the mainstream; a gender analysis of the work of the UN Children's Rights Committee) in 2006. This research focused on the gendered effects of the Concluding Observations of the Committee on the position of parents (Nijmegen: Wolf Legal Publishers 2006).

Van den Brink has published on a variety of topics including human rights of women and of LGBT's, the (ir)relevance of sex as a legal category, unpaid care as a legal issue, gender analysis of state sovereignty, and the accommodation of religious manifestation.

Currently she is engaged in research into LGBTIQ right (gender identity, reproductive rights, parental rights), the 'framing' of circumcision m/f, and into sports, gender & human rights.