Kuehling is interested in the study of small
matrilinear and
matrilocal societies. Her research and teaching includes also the ethnography of New Guinea and Micronesia, anthropology of gender and landscape and the history of anthropology.[1] She did undergraduate studies in
Social anthropology and development sociology at the
University of Göttingen and there received her
Magister degree in 1989 with a thesis about Chewing
betel in
Melanesia.[2] She got a
stipend of the
Friedrich Ebert Foundation and the
Australian National University for her postgraduate studies there from 1994—1998.[3] She conducted 18 months of fieldwork on
Dobu and wrote her
PhD thesis[4][5] about
Kula rings in this society at the in 1999.[6] She taught for five years at
University of Heidelberg before she moved to Canada in 2008. She has published a book (Dobu: Ethics of Exchange on a Massim Island, University of Hawaiʻi Press, 2005) and journal articles on kula exchange, value, personhood, morality, gender, emplacement and teaching methods. During various visits to Dobu she started a program to revitalize kula exchange there which is funded by the
Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.[6] In 2015 she gained an award from the University of Regina for innovation in teaching[7]
Her description of the inhabitants of Dobu differs from earlier writings of
Reo Fortune and
Ruth Benedict in portraying them not only as aggressive and nasty. Fortune wrote: "The Dobuans prefer to be infernally nasty or else not nasty at all", Benedict describes them as ″lawless and treacherous. Every man’s hand is against every other man.″.[8] Kuehling questions their aggressiveness, highlights instead their poverty, marginality in the global economy and their former living as
indentured laborers. The island's inhabitants, who did not know their negative portray in older studies, were quite happy about her work.[9]
^Review: Caroline Thomas: Dobu: Ethics of Exchange on a Massim Island, Papua New Guinea by Susanne Kuehling. In: Paideuma, Band 55, 2009, S. 301–302.
JSTOR40342055.
^Review: Keith Hart: Dobu: Ethics of Exchange on a Massim Island, Papua New Guinea by Susanne Kuehling. In: Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, Band 15, Nr. 1, 2009, S. 216–217 .
JSTOR20527680.
^Review:
Martha Macintyre: Dobu: Ethics of Exchange on a Massim Island, Papua New Guinea by Susanne Kuehling. In: Pacific Affairs, Band 79, Nr. 4, 2006/2007, S. 712–713.
JSTOR40023812.
^Review: Holger Jebens: Dobu: ethics of exchange on a Massim Island, Papua New Guinea by Susanne Kuehling. In Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, Band 134, H. 2, 2009, S. 285–288.
JSTOR25843197.