Franziska Bork-Petersen

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My research is centered around techniques and practices of staging and modifying the human body. This means that I work with diverse examples that range from ballet shoes and cosmetic surgery to how bodies appear, act and interact on social media platforms. My research builds on perspectives from performance studies, such as mise en scene, transformation and performativity.

Other academic disciplines I draw on include dance studies, fashion studies and body studies.

In the project Knowing in Motion: Dance, Body, Archive I currently work on the archival knowledges dance costume holds about historical dance. How does costume encounter, shape and transform the moving body and how can we get these ways of knowing out of the costume?

My last book Body Utopianism: Between Enhancement and Estrangement investigated embodied actions as bearers of utopianism. It discussed utopian transformations in terms of both their emancipatory potential and their risk of being ideologically co-opted.

I hold a PhD in Theatre Studies from Stockholm University and Freie Universität Berlin.