Louise Bethlehem

Louise Bethlehem

Louise Bethlehem is Golda Meir Fellow (2002-2003), Associate Professor in English and Cultural Studies, and incoming Chair of the Program in Cultural Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Her book, Skin Tight: Apartheid Literary Culture and its Aftermath (Unisa Press, Brill 2006), was published in Hebrew translation by Resling in 2011.

She has co-edited nine volumes in the fields of South African literature, African Studies and Cultural Studies, including the prizewinning volume South Africa in the Global Imaginary, co-edited with Leon de Kock and Sonja Laden (Unisa, 2004). As a literary and cultural theorist, she remembers Dr. Rohan Quince's remarkable literature lessons at King David Victory Park during the late nineteen-seventies with particular appreciation.

Between 2014 and 2019, Louise Bethlehem was Principal Investigator of the research project Apartheid—The Global Itinerary: South African Cultural Formations in Transnational Circulation, 1948-1990 funded by a prestigious competitive grant from the European Research Council (ERC). In recognition of the importance of her research, she was appointed to Academia-Net, an Expert Database of Outstanding Female Scholars and Scientists, with the participation of 47 European science and research organizations. Blog entries detailing the course of the research project are available here.

Bethlehem has held additional research fellowships from the Israel Science Foundation (ISF) and the Harry S. Truman Institute for the Advancement of Peace at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and serves on the Academic Committee of the Institute. She has supervised over 30 graduate students, many of whom have gone on to secure academic appointments in their own right. She lives in Hod Hasharon, also home to her two adult children.