Dr Norbert Bugeja has lectured to students, postgraduate researchers and academic staff within the Institute of English Cultures and Literatures at the University of Silesia, with a focus on the postcolonial aesthetics of memoir and the art of Titian and Edouard Manet in the work of Libyan writer Hisham Matar. Dr Bugeja’s contribution formed part of the events in the run-up to the awarding of a Doctorate honoris causa to novelist and Nobel laureate John Maxwell Coetzee by the University of Silesia, which is this year marking its fiftieth anniversary. 

Dr Bugeja discussed the question of ‘the aesthetic response to tragedy’ (Teofilo F. Ruiz) in Matar’s memoir ‘The Return: Fathers, Sons and the Land in Between’, arguing for the memoir form as a space of asylum, and reflecting on the broader trends currently marking the choices of memoir writers in the Mediterranean region.

Dr Bugeja’s academic visit to Poland was co-ordinated by the Institute of English Cultures and Literatures at the University of Silesia, currently under the headship of novelist and professor Zbigniew Bialas.