I arrived at Roehampton in 2017, after a Ph.D. on Literature and Dance at Cambridge University, and lectureships in Dance Studies at Middlesex University London, the University of Otago (New Zealand’s oldest university) and the Northern School of Contemporary Dance, a conservatoire in Leeds. I have also held visiting positions at the University of Texas at Austin and the University Grenoble Alpes, and residencies in Oslo, Hamburg and Malta. Prior to my academic career, I worked in academic publishing in the fields of dance and music at a German publishing house (Olms), and during my student years in various theatres and opera houses.

My prize-winning research concerns the cross-connections between Dance and Politics in its many facets, ranging from policy and ideology, covert politics, to gender, national and cultural identity. Radically interdisciplinary, it engages with many other academic fields, foremost among them philosophy, theatre, literature, occasionally sociology and more recently the visual arts and sciences. My first book, Performing Femininity: Cross-currents of Dance and Literature in German Modernism (Oxford: Lang) analyses the cultural representations of female identity created by the interaction between choreography and literary works. My anthology Dance and Politics was the first to explore the intersection of dance and political studies. I also co-edited Dancing Europe: Identities, Languages, Institutions (2022) with Nicole Haitzinger, which investigates the place of dance and performance in the development, confirmation and subversion of conceptions of Europe from the 20^th century until today. I am currently working on a monograph on “Dancing the Everyday: Choreographies of the Ordinary and their Corporeal Politics.” 

My role as Research Programme Leader for the School of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Roehampton means that I am closely engaged with our Ph.D. student community. I am the Book Reviews Editor for the leading UK journal Dance Research, and frequently review submissions for domestic or international presses, journals and funding bodies. I have given invited lectures and keynote talks in many countries, including the USA, Brazil, Sweden, Austria, Bulgaria, France and Italy, in both academic and public-facing contexts.

Contact: alexandra.kolb[at]roehampton.ac.uk

Ph.D. (Cambridge University), MPhil (Cambridge University), MA (Cologne University)

As Reviews Editor of Dance Research, I identify potential reviewers and allocate books, edit submissions, liaise with publishing houses, and fulfil tasks for the Editorial Board as they arise. I sit on the Advisory Board of Bloomsbury’s Dance in Dialogue Book Series and have been on the Executive Boards of the British-based Society for Dance Research, the US-based Society of Dance History Scholars and the AHRC Peer Review Committee. I am also a member of several dance and performance-related societies across the globe.

I have researched on dance and politics, gender, and dance and the everyday, covering many dance genres with a focus on modern and contemporary, but also including ballet, popular or folk forms such as Schuhplattler as well as other performance art and installation works.

I have published well over sixty outputs, including more than thirty peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters in addition to my books, encyclopaedia entries, research reports, choreographies, blogs, and book and dance reviews. My research on politics has attracted media interest, ranging from Times Radio to the Austrian Broadcasting Corporation on FM4 and the New Zealand Herald.

I am also a keen practitioner and am conservatoire-trained in ballet, with further training in modern and contemporary dance, salsa, ballroom, Latin, and Early English country dance among others. I find that experiencing these diverse practices helps me when thinking through issues from a kinaesthetic as well as a cognitive perspective.

My teaching engages closely with questions of political or philosophical performance critique, sharpening students’ sense of critical discourse, whether at grassroots or established institutional levels. I draw on my backgrounds in Literature, Art History and Philosophy alongside Dance and Theatre to convey to my students a sense of the breadth of the field and Dance’s many overlaps with other artistic and scholarly developments; as well as the diversity of its international forms and styles.

I have convened and taught on a wide range of undergraduate and Master's modules and am currently convenor of two large Master’s modules with over 80 students in each: Philosophy and Performance, and Performance of Heritage. Some of my teaching is hybrid, moving from the classroom to the studio, to illustrate the close links between dance theory and practice.

The other modules I have taught at Roehampton include Dance, Culture and Society; Ways of Knowing; Key Perspectives; Dance, History and Politics; Dance, History and Philosophy; Extended Essay, Gender, Sexualities and Performance; BA Dissertation; MA Dissertation; Choreomundus Dissertation Writing Class; Classicism and Power; Representing and Embodying Dance History; Dance Anthropology, and Contemporary and Commercial Dance.

Doctoral supervision

I am a highly experienced Ph.D. supervisor, including both traditional written and Practice-as-Research projects, and have overseen projects in a broad range of subjects and international contexts. I have examined many Ph.D.s, both in the UK and overseas, and am part of the AHRC’s TECHNE Peer Review College.

I welcome enquiries about Ph.D. study related to my areas of interest in any form of dance.

In my recent research projects, I have worked closely with arts and cultural sectors for public engagement and knowledge exchange. I received a British Academy/Leverhulme Grant in 2024 to develop an innovative project, entitled On Air, exploring the historical, scientific and political impact of inflatables in choreography. I have established a network of a number of independent choreographers and visual artists working in this area, including Bambí Benko, Dr. Mike Shaw, Gabriella Engdahl and Adrienne Hart, as well as engineers, cultural geographers and environmental stakeholders from Oxford, Cambridge and the Sorbonne, with a view to working collaboratively together on inflatable structures. This included a symposium The Marvels and Misery of Inflatables held at Roehampton, with further written and oral outputs to follow.

Prior to this, I conducted an SPF-funded project on Dancing through Crises, looking at the impact of Brexit and Covid on the UK’s freelance dance scene and involving senior arts professionals from organisations such as Sadler’s Wells, The Place, Akram Khan Company, Arts Council England, Hofesh Shechter Company, One Dance UK, International Festival Berlin, the Freelance Task Force, as well as freelance dance artists such as Wendy Houston and Adam Moore.

My project Dancing the everyday: Some very ordinary and private experiences, funded by British Academy/Leverhulme, explores the ways in which choreographers have drawn on everyday gestures, untrained performers and urban landscapes to explore how choreographic embodiments of the quotidian have contributed to aesthetic innovation and social critique. This has established my collaboration with Cologne-based performance artists Angie Hiesl and Roland Kaiser, which is ongoing.

Earlier projects include Dance and Politics (UoO Research Grant), Overt and Covert Politics (UoR Research Grant), Dance and Literature (DAAD) and Wigman’s Witch Dances (Harry Ransom Fellowship).