Dr Virginia Madsen

Full description

Virginia Madsen is an experienced research academic and teacher of media. She is also an established radio producer and writer whose works have been broadcast and commissioned by the major public broadcasting institutions in Europe and Australia. Before entering research and academia, she worked for many years both on staff and as an independent producer for the ABC's national radio networks, Radio National (RN) and ABC Classic FM. With an extensive body of work in radio and sound performance, Virginia has been recognized for her achievements with international prizes and invitations to conferences and festivals, directly representing the ABC with a number of her radio works. In her role as a radio producer and artist she has produced numerous programmes in the arts and culture field, being a founding producer of the ABC Program 'The Listening Room'. She has also hosted and participated in live programming and discussion genres, and worked as a broadcast journalist for ABC and community radio. She is most known for her radio features, documentaries, dramas and experimental radiophonic or music works, a number of which have been broadcast in the USA, the UK, Finland, Denmark, Sweden, France, Croatia and Germany. Madsen has also worked as a sound designer for theatre and museum contexts in addition to creating a short film and sound designs for SBS televison.

Virginia joined Macquarie Media Dept. in 2008 as Convenor Radio. Previously she taught media (radio and sound) at the University of Technology, Sydney and at the College of Fine Art (COFA, UNSW). Virginia was awarded a prestigious Vice Chancellor's Post Doctoral Reseach Fellowship at the University of NSW in 2002. She is a member of Macquarie's Centre for Media History, has a DCA, Doctorate of Creative Arts (UTS, 2001), a B.A. Communications (UTS 1983) and a Post Grad. Dip. Arts (French, Sydney University, 1993). She has also studied in the Dept. of Education (Human Sciences, Macquarie University).

Virginia's academic research interests span sound and radio production, theory and history, auditory culture studies and acoustic ecologies from natural soundscapes to podcasting, new audio media and audio arts, and the history of public broadcasting radio with a particular emphasis on 'cultural radio' forms and their specific development in Europe and Australia. Madsen has specialist interests in exploratory cultural radio programming from the 1930s to the present, and documentary as an expressive form (film and radio). She has undertaken research in this field at the BBC (London), ARD (Berlin), Danmarks Radio and at France Culture, Radio France (Paris). She is currently researching and writing (Book): 'The Other New Wave: Filme Sonore and the Documentary Imagination'. She is a Member of the Centre for Media History, Macquarie University.