Dr. des. Roman Bischof-Vegh

Roman Bischof-Vegh studied English and German Literature at the University of Konstanz, Biology at the ETH Zurich and English and History at the University of Basel. In January 2016, he received his Master of Arts from the University of Basel with a thesis on embodied concepts of war and war experience in First World War poetry. Due to his biological studies, his research interests in literary studies often overlap with topics in natural sciences. Currently, he is combining these interests by writing a PhD thesis on representations of mental illness in contemporary Anglo-American novels (working title: “Narrating Neurons: Perspectives on Mental Illness in American and British Novels in the Age of Neuroscience”). Next to a detailed analysis of the literary works, his research includes a close look at the medical and scientific literature which corresponds to the psychological phenomena encountered in the fictional writing. Since September 2017, Roman Bischof-Vegh is employed as an assistant to the chair of Literatures in English/North American Studies at the Department of English at the University of Bern. As a member of the project, he will conduct research on a project titled “Narratives of Failure in Literary Depictions of Mental Illness.”