Roger Benjamin is Professor of Art History in the Discipline of Art History and Film Studies within the School of Art, Communication and English at the University of Sydney. Born and raised in Canberra, Australian Capital Territory, he completed an Honours degree in Philosophy and Fine Arts at the University of Melbourne in 1979, followed by an MA in 1983 and a PhD in 1987 from Columbia University. Benjamin taught at the Australian National University School of Art prior to his 2003 appointment as Power Professor of Art History and Visual Culture and Director of the Power Institute at the University of Sydney. From 2007 onward, he has served as Professor of Art History. He has held visiting fellowships at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris, the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, and the Humanities Research Centre at the Australian National University. Professor Benjamin supervises Honours, Master's, and PhD theses in Aboriginal art, European art, and Orientalist art.

Benjamin's research specializations include modern art history, Orientalist art, Fauvism, Matisse, French North Africa, and Australian Aboriginal art. His Australian Research Council Discovery project examines art and cultural exchange at the Strait of Gibraltar, supported by a grant of $676,289 (DP130103798). Key publications encompass Orientalist Aesthetics: Art, Colonialism, and French North Africa, 1880-1930 (University of California Press, 2003), which received the Robert Motherwell Book Award in 2004; Orientalism: Delacroix to Klee (1997); Orientalism's Interlocutors: Painting, Architecture, Photography (editor, 2004); Renoir and Algeria (2003); The Fauve Landscape (1994); Matisse's 'Notes of a Painter': Criticism, Theory, and Context, 1891-1908 (1987); and Kandinsky and Klee in Tunisia (co-authored with Cristina Ashjian, 2015). His contributions have been honored with the Australian Research Council Discovery Outstanding Researcher Award in 2003 and the J. Paul Getty Postdoctoral Fellowship in the History of Art and the Humanities in 1990.

Professional Email: roger.benjamin@sydney.edu.au