Franziska Heller currently teaches at the Department of Film Studies at the University of Zurich. Previously, she was a FONTE-Visiting Professor at Filmuniversität Babelsberg KONRAD WOLF. Her current research focuses primarily on methodologies of digital film and memory cultures as well as methods of film and media historiography. In this context, she is also concerned with the politics of subject-specific open access publishing. In the field of film and media theory, Heller is particularly interested in forms and politics of aesthetic historiography and historical phenomenology.

Franziska Heller habilitated at the University of Zurich with a thesis on the composition, availability, and circulation of moving images in digital culture. The study was published in 2020 under the title Update! Film und Mediengeschichte im Zeitalter der digitalen Reproduzierbarkeit (available in print and open access). Her other publications include the monograph Filmästhetik des Fluiden: Strömungen des Erzählens von Vigo bis Tarkowskij, von Huston bis Cameron (2010), as well as various articles in film studies manuals, anthologies, and journals.