Pia Banzhaf is Assistant Professor of German in the Department of Linguistics, Languages, and Cultures at Michigan State University since 2016. She currently teaches undergraduate classes in Beginning and Intermediate German as well as a course on the Creative Process at MSU’s Center for Integrative Studies in the Arts and Humanities (CISAH). Her research interests are manifold. She currently focuses on the perceptual processes at play when a spectator engages with performing objects and the potential these processes hold as catalysts for community development and is always on the lookout for collaborators.
She received her PhD at Queen’s University at Kingston, Canada (2018) in Cultural Studies for her Cognitive Poetics of Puppetry research project. She completed an M.A. in German Literary Studies at Memorial University of Newfoundland. Following the completion of an M.A. equivalent at the University of Dortmund, Germany, in Pedagogy, German Linguistics, and Comparative Cultural Anthropology of Textiles she obtained her teaching license in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia.