Rate My Professor Heather Benbow

Professor Heather Benbow is Professor in German Studies in the School of Languages and Linguistics, Faculty of Arts at the University of Melbourne, where she also serves as Deputy Associate Dean, Graduate Research. She has been Convenor of German Studies and has taught German language and culture at the University for over twenty years. Benbow received her PhD from the University of Melbourne in 2003. Her academic interests encompass German cultural history, with a particular emphasis on food studies in wartime and intercultural contexts, gender studies, transnational migration, trauma studies, life writing literature, and culinary culture and history. She has served as an invited researcher at the Free University of Berlin, the University of Cambridge, and the University of Tübingen.

Benbow has made significant contributions through her publications in leading international journals and monographs. Notable works include the book Marriage in Turkish German Popular Culture: States of Matrimony in the New Millennium (2015), the edited volume Food, Culture and Identity in Germany's Century of War (2019), and articles such as 'Cultural Indigestion in Multicultural Australia: Fear of "Foreign" Foods in Australian Media' (2015, Gastronomica: The Journal of Food and Culture), 'Europe on a Plate: Food, Identity and Cultural Diversity in Contemporary Europe' (2016, Australian and New Zealand Journal of European Studies), 'Ethnic Drag in the Films of Doris Dörrie' (2007, German Studies Review), and 'Ways in, Ways Out: Theorizing the Kantian Body' (2003, Body & Society). She received a Dyason Fellowship in 2018 for the project 'Breaking Bread: German Experiences of Food and War in Transnational Context'. Benbow supervises PhD students in literature, film studies, and food studies, influencing scholarship on cultural intersections, historical narratives, and identity in German and European contexts.