Susan Barber is an Emeritus Professor in the Film, Television, and Media Studies Department in the School of Film and Television, Loyola Marymount University, USA, and has taught film history at LMU for over 30 years. She also taught at the University of Southern California and the University of California, Irvine, USA.

She received her Masters and Doctorate degrees at the School of Cinematic Arts, University of Southern California, USA. Her passion for Australian film began in the mid-1970s when the new wave of films from Australia began to screen in Los Angeles theaters, coincidentally when she began her graduate work at USC. Inspired by this exciting new wave, she selected the film revival as her dissertation topic.

She received several research grants to travel to Sydney, Melbourne, and Adelaide, Australia, in order to study the industry and its films first-hand. She had the pleasure of meeting many enthusiastic and talented filmmakers.