Violet Hatch, Lucy Cavendish

Biographical Information

Before coming to Cambridge, I studied for a BA in English and Related literature at the University of York and an MA in Modern and Contemporary literature at UCL.

Research Interests

My PhD argues that radio drama uses the unique sonic abilities of wireless technology coupled with the widespread reach of the BBC media platform to encourage empathy in British society during the interwar period. By relying solely on sound, radio encouraged listening as a core skill to be practiced regularly from within the home. Because of the BBCs unique position as both a media platform commissioned to “inform, educate and entertain”, and an institutional framework; the ephemerality of BBC broadcasting gave writers the ability to produce and broadcast content which deviated from the restraints imposed by traditional British institutions such as schools, universities, Parliament, the Church and the military, all of which are comparably self-contained, their teachings frozen in history. By contrast, the uncontained nature of broadcasting drama– if listened to properly– enhances empathy, a skill to be applied in daily interpersonal communication. As with all forms of art, sound cannot be wholly contained nor understood within a single framework. By uncovering scripts of these interwar radio dramas and the accompanying traces of what remains of their material history, I endeavour to understand the relationship between the written script and its lost sonic counterpart as it was situated in its original context.

My areas of interest for supervisions include modernist poetry, modernism and technology, literature and radio, the contemporary American novel, affect theory, spiritualism, institutionalism and dark academia. Specific writers of interest include (but are not limited to) Mina Loy, T.S. Eliot, Elisabeth Bishop, Virginia Woolf, Katherine Mansfield, Elizabeth Bowen, Evelyn Waugh, Muriel Spark, Sylvia Plath, Samuel Beckett, Dylan Thomas, E.M Forster and Jean Rhys.