Per Roar

Per Roar serves as Professor at the Department of Dance, Oslo National Academy of the Arts, where his work critically intersects dance practice with sociological inquiry, memory studies, and political discourse. His institutional affiliation reflects deep engagement with performative research methodologies across global contexts including Southern Africa, Eastern Europe, and Southeast Asia.

His research program centers on Collective Trauma, Memory Work, and Autoethnography, examining how dance improvisation and choreography process societal crises. Key interests span Dance Anthropology, Ethnographic Fieldwork, and the politics of representation, with explicit focus on white privilege, climate emergency, and counter-narrative construction through embodied practices. This interdisciplinary approach bridges Composition, Sociology, and Performance Studies to challenge dominant historical frameworks.

Recent publications (2020-2024) demonstrate consistent thematic urgency around trauma and social justice, evolving from climate crisis analyses (When Monday Came) toward explicit anti-racist critique (Anger, ignorance and white privilege). The 2024 works reveal methodological maturation in Performative Memory Work, utilizing dance anthropology to excavate marginalized histories while maintaining artistic research rigor.

He leads significant projects including ART=POLITICS: A choreographic case study and PILOT: PREPARING Performative Time, which investigate remembrance politics through choreographic inquiry. These initiatives reflect sustained commitment to using dance as a tool for political intervention, particularly regarding collective trauma processing and representation ethics.