Franziska Bork-Petersen

Franziska Bork-Petersen serves as Associate Professor in the Department of Arts and Cultural Studies at the University of Copenhagen, where her research investigates embodied practices of staging and modifying the human body across contexts from ballet shoes to social media platforms.

Her educational foundation includes a PhD in Theatre Studies from Stockholm University and Freie Universität Berlin, underpinning her interdisciplinary approach that synthesizes performance studies, dance studies, fashion studies, and body studies.

Research Interests:

• Utopian dimensions of embodied actions balancing emancipatory potential and ideological co-option
• Archival knowledges embedded in dance costumes and their transformative impact on moving bodies
• Performativity frameworks including mise en scène and transformation in contemporary practices

Analysis of her 2022-2024 publications reveals a concentrated focus on dance archives as living repositories of embodied knowledge, with recurring themes of costume materiality, collaborative infrastructures in dance production, and the utopian tensions inherent in body modification. Her work consistently bridges historical dance practices with present-day archival encounters.

No scientific awards were documented in the source materials.

Her academic mentorship and grant activities remain unreported in available texts, though her collaborative projects demonstrate active engagement with international research networks through co-authored publications and joint presentations.

She leads the "Knowing in Motion: Dance, Body, Archive" project while maintaining key partnerships with researchers including Karen Anne Vedel and Annika Lawaetz, with whom she explores contemporary manifestations of dance archival practices.