Roberta Maierhofer works as a lectuerer in American Studies and is the Director of the Center for Inter-American Studies (C.IAS) at the University of Graz. She is a cultural studies scholar concerned with questions of cultural representations of material realities and experiences, in particular in regard to age/ageing and gender.

She studied English/American Studies and German Studies at the University of Graz as well as Comparative Literature at the State University of New York at Binghamton, USA, where she is still an Adjunct Associate Professor. She has also been an honorary professor at the University of Shkodër, Albania, since 2012.

She is co-editor of the book series Aging Studies (transcript) and on the advisory board of the Journal of Aging, Humanities, and the Arts. She is a member of the Humanities and Arts Committee of the Gerontological Society of America (GSA) as a cultural studies expert bridging the humanities and social sciences with the scientific and medical fields of gerontology. In addition, as a founding member of the European Network in Aging Studies (ENAS), she was instrumental in establishing the North American Network in Aging Studies (NANAS). Due to her scientific expertise, she is the representative of Austrian universities on the Fulbright Commission. She has also been a member of the University Council of the University of Bamberg, Germany, since 2012. Since 2004, she has directed the Graz International Summer School Seggau and the related book series Off Campus: Seggau School of Thought.