IMS Lars Elleström Memorial Fellowship: Chiel Kattenbelt
Chiel Kattenbelt visits IMS in March and June 2026 to engage in dialogue on intermedial and multimodal studies. His program includes seminars connected to Lars Elleström’s influential work, a colloquium, where participants will analyse concrete examples, case studies, from an intermedial and multimodal perspective.
IMS Lars Elleström Memorial Fellowship
Every year the Centre invites a guest lecturer to honor the memory its founder, Lars Elleström. The guest lecturers aim to foster new research in intermedial and multimodal studies, illustrating how one can both follow in Elleström’s footsteps and challenge his principles.
Interested? Please contact Helena Rydén, the Centre's Administration Officer.
We spoke with Chiel Kattenbelt about his interests and expectations for his visit in 2026 as part of the Lars Elleström Memorial Fellowship.
From Theatre to Media - A Journey Through Time
- When I began studying theatre studies at Utrecht University in the late 1970s, the program expanded to include film and television. In the 1990s, the so-called new, or digital, media were added. The program's name was eventually changed from theatre, film, and television studies to media and culture studies.
- Since my appointment, I have been one of the few exceptions that prove the rule. My chair was initially called media comparison and was later renamed media comparison and intermediality. Comparing media was never an end, but a way to explore the specificity of media and their interrelations and to address all kinds of topics that are relevant to all media in terms of their role and function in culture and society and more specifically within the domain of the arts.
Theory Meets Practice
- I've always combined my theoretical work at the university with more practical work, as a performer myself, as a professor of new theatricality at the Maastricht Theatre Academy, and as a researcher and dramaturge with the company CREW in Brussels. In practice, I've experienced the importance of exploring the aesthetic-expressive possibilities of media through play, using the theatre stage as a playground.
- My focus is primarily on media expressions as artistic practices, and I'm particularly interested in their dramaturgy in terms of referentiality (context), order and structure (composition), and function and effect (audience address).
Intermedial Dialogues and Collaborative Futures
- I'm coming to IMS to exchange ideas with colleagues and students about intermedial and multimodal studies, where we will certainly also discuss Lars Elleström's important work in this field and how we could develop it further. My lecture will tie in with this, as will workshops in which we analyse concrete examples from an intermedial and multimodal perspective with a critical reflection on the tools we use for this purpose.
- We are very proud to welcome Chiel Kattenbelt to the campus in Växjö, says Jørgen Bruhn, head of the Linnaeus University Centre for Intermedial and Multimodal Studies (IMS) at Linnaeus University. His visits provide an opportunity to host several events focused on intermedial and multimodal studies, as well as on honoring Lars Elleström’s legacy.