Training in interdisciplinary and archival studies at the University of Bergen

My Ph.D. project deals with Samuel Beckett's radio plays, and has two main objectives: on the one hand, to discuss the plays' ground-breaking, radiophonic articulation of certain issues of communication; and on the other, to address them as exemplary expe riments into the synthesis of art and technology, in which the artistic medium is made to speak. This original, analogical interpretation - which analyses the plays' engagement with the structural and technological features of their medium - is interdisci plinary in nature: it draws on historical accounts of the praxis of radio, on material from the Beckett archives, and on a pragmatic philosophy of language for which, following Wittgenstein, 'meaning is use'. This last source serves to highlight the perfo rmative aspect of the plays, of radio and of communication. I aim, through the project, to contribute to the development of a new research methodology for conceiving the relationship between text and medium. My research stay at the University of Bergen w ill benefit both my Ph.D. project and my future academic development, in two, interconnected ways. Firstly, I will carry out research at the University's Wittgenstein Archives and, under Dr. Erik Tonning's supervision, on a collection of Beckett letters. I expect to uncover new material of significance to my present project, and will also undergo intensive training in archival research, a field of increasing academic importance. Secondly, I will participate in two international, interdisciplinary research projects run from the Department of Foreign Languages: one on modernism and broadcasting, the other on aesthetic interrelationships across the arts. In both cases, the theme corresponds to, and also broadens the horizons of, my current research interests . Both projects will result in publications, one of which I will co-edit.