Burauskaitė graduated in 1965 from the Faculty of Chemical Technology at Kaunas Polytechnic Institute. She worked as a technician in various industrial and research organisations. In 1968, she became involved in the growing ethnographic movement, and became an active member of the Ramuva Ethnography Club, established in 1969. She was the chairman of the club from the beginning of 1971 to its dissolution. In 1971, she and like-minded people set up the Raskila Folk Song Club.
In 1973, 1974 and 1976, she was interrogated by the KGB. She maintained contact with Moscow dissidents, and provided them with information about events in Lithuania.
In 1988, she started working at the Lithuanian Revival Movement’s Commission for Research of the Crimes of Stalinism. She headed it from 1992 to 1997, after it became the Research Centre for Reprisals in Lithuania (RLTC) in 1991. In April 1997, after the RLTC was joined to the Genocide and Resistance Research Centre of Lithuania (LGGRTC), she worked as the head of the Archive Lists of Names Department. From 2000 to 2007, she worked for the commission evaluating the activities of people who collaborated secretly with the special services of the former USSR. Since 2009, she has been director of the Genocide and Resistance Research Centre of Lithuania.
According to Burauskaitė, during Soviet times, every member of the intelligentsia felt they were living in a cage. Many sought to expand the space in this cage, and there were two behavioural strategies. One was to accommodate oneself to the Soviet regime. These people had a personal censor inside. Another group consisted of people who did not want to stay in a cage. While they did not openly proclaim anti-Soviet slogans, they took the circumstances of the system as a personal insult. They were unhappy at the restrictions on collaborating with intellectuals from Western countries, and the limitations on self-expression. They could be ascribed to the cultural resistance that came from the personal spirit and the need for personal expression. Burauskaitė names the ethnographer Norbertas Vėlius as an ideal of the cultural opposition. Participation in the expeditions led by Vėlius gave people great satisfaction at their personal contribution to preserving the nation’s past.