Eleanor Benson

Eleanor Tamara Benson (b. 9 February 1956) is a Georgeland politician, lawyer and academic. On July 3, 2009, Benson was elected to succeed the deceased Magnus Noonan as Member of the House of Commons for Lylecity. She is a member of the Liberal Democratic Party of the United Islands.

Benson was born in Tokyo as Eleanor Samuels. Her father, Mark Samuels (1903-1986), was Georgeland's Ambassador to Japan from 1950 to 1958. Benson's mother, Lisa Douglas-Samuels (1928-2005), was her father's third wife and 25 years his junior. Benson was educated in Japan and then in Korea as her father took up an academic post in Tokyo and later Seoul. The family returned to Georgeland in 1967. Benson attended the University of Mainland from 1974 to 1978, graduating with a masters degree in constitutional law. Admitted to the Bar in 1980, Benson practiced law briefly before entering the academic arena, serving as a lecturer in constitutional law at several major universities in the 1980s and 1990s. In 1992 she joined what was then the Democratic Party of the United Islands. Benson co-authored several legal studies texts in the 1990s. From 1994 to 1998 she was Director of the Constitutional Law Institute in Topstad. In 1999 she became the Democratic Party's Federal District Secretary. She was elected to the Topstad City Council in 2000 but resigned in 2003 to return to academia, becoming Senior Lecturer in Constitutional Studies at the University of Mainland's Lylecity campus.

In 2005, Benson joined the new Liberal Democratic Party. She continued her academic career until 2009, when she stood for LDP preselection to replace the late Magnus Noonan as MP for Lylecity. She was successful by a wide margin and at the by-election of 3 June, was elected with a slightly decreased majority over Noonan's 2007 election result. Benson was sworn in as an MP on 6 July, when Parliament resumed. She currently sits on the Joint Committee on Taxation Policy and the House Committees on Constitutional Affairs and Families.

Benson married Jeff Benson in 1984. The couple have four adult children.