Rate My Professor Michael Bentham

Dr Michael Bentham serves as a Lecturer in the School of Communication, Media and Journalism, part of the College of Creative Arts, Design and Humanities at Adelaide University. He is an accomplished award-winning filmmaker, researcher, and educator. A graduate of the United Kingdom's National Film and Television School, Bentham earned his Doctorate from the University of Melbourne, where he was awarded the Margaret Lawrence Social Justice Award in recognition of the social impact of his narrative fiction filmmaking. His feature-length drama, Disclosure (2020), which examines the social consequences of an allegation of child-on-child abuse, premiered at the Palm Springs International Film Festival. The film received nominations for the Australian Academy Award for Best Indie Film and the Australian Directors' Guild Award for Best Direction in a Feature Film (Budget Under $1 Million), and it won the ATOM Award for Best Fiction Feature Film.

Bentham's current practice-led research investigates the articulation and application of moving image narratives as a research methodology, with particular reference to themes of social justice, biography, ethnography, masculinity, and trauma. He brings over 15 years of experience in designing and delivering university-level courses in fiction directing and screenwriting, including a two-year tenure as Head of Directing at the Northern Film School in the United Kingdom. A Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, he is eligible to co-supervise Masters and PhD students at Adelaide University. His scholarly contributions include the forthcoming book Screenwriting the Contemporary Biopic: A Reflexive Case Study (Palgrave Macmillan, 2025), and peer-reviewed articles such as "The biopic screenplay as a research output: towards a working definition of narrative fiction filmmaking methodology" published in the Journal of Screenwriting (2022, 13(2), 187-206). Additional publications feature conference papers like "Screenwriting as Strategy: towards a working definition of narrative fiction filmmaking methodology" (with M. Carey, Screenwriting Research Network Conference, 2022), "The decline of the film school auteur: Are industry and university drivers stymieing new voices?" (ASPERA Conference, 2022), "Writing to right: how does the screenwriter reconcile tensions between fact and fiction in the authorship of a biopic?" (SRN Conference, 2017), and "From fact to fiction: authoring a modern biopic" (SRN Conference, 2016). Bentham currently teaches courses such as Introduction to Screenwriting, Film, Entertainment and Aesthetics, and Creative Production.