Virginia Madsen is an experienced research and teaching academic, leading the radio strand for MMCCS Dept. She is also an established radio producer and writer whose works have been broadcast by the major public service media institutions in Europe, USA and Australia. Before entering academia, she worked for many years on staff and as an independent producer for the ABC's national radio networks, 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, broadcasts, commissions and invitations to conferences and festivals. In her role as a radio producer she has contributed a large body of work to the arts and culture field, being a founding producer of the ABC Program The Listening Room. She has hosted live programming and discussion genres, and worked as a broadcast journalist/producer for ABC and community radio. Madsen has also created sound designs for theatre, television and museum contexts (egs: Performance Space; Adelaide and Sydney festivals; The Australian Museum, Sydney; SBS TV). Madsen has produced seminal texts in the history of radio documentary. In 2002 she was awarded a prestigious Vice Chancellor's Post Doctoral Research Fellowship (UNSW, Sydney). Qualifications: DCA (UTS: 2001), BA Communications, (UTS 1983), and Post Grad. Diploma of Arts (USyd, French studies, 1993). She is currently writing the first international history of the documentary in radio. Madsen is Chair of the Management Committee for the Centre for Media History (CMH), Macquarie University and a member of its Advisory Board: http://mq.edu.au/research/centres_and_groups/cmh/people/