Anna Pakes

Background

About Anna Pakes

My translation work has included the English version of philosopher Frédéric Pouillaude's book Le désoeuvrement chorégraphique (English title: Unworking Choreography, Oxford University Press, 2017), as well as work for Paris 8 Danse in Translation, I am currently completing an English translation of choreographer Noé Soulier's book Actions, Mouvements et Gestes, due to be published in 2024. I recently completed the MA Translation at University of Surrey, developing my knowledge of translation technologies in particular. My dissertation combined translation studies and philosophy, investigating whether neural machine translation can extend translators’ cognition. I'm a member of the Chartered Institute of Linguists and passed its Diploma in Translation in 1997. I have 25 years' experience working in Higher Education, teaching philosophy to dance students and doing research in philosophy of dance. I worked at what is now called Trinity-Laban (1997 to 2002), then University of Roehampton (2003 to 2021), and most recently have been teaching intermittently at the Centre national de la danse contemporaine in Angers, France. I was Research Lead for the Dance Department at the University of Roehampton from 2016 to 2021, and oversaw preparations of the department's REF2021 submission. My research to date has explored a range of philosophical issues relevant to dance practice, including the mind-body problem, phenomenology, practice-as-research, re-enactment and dance ontology. I co-edited (with Jenny Bunker and Bonnie Rowell) the anthology Thinking through Dance: The Philosophy of Dance performance and Practices (Dance Books, 2013). I am also the author of a monograph, Choreography Invisible: The Disappearing Work of Dance (OUP, 2020), which won the American Society for Aesthetics’ Selma Jeanne Cohen Prize in Dance Aesthetics in 2021. I remain a Senior Honorary Research Fellow at University of Roehampton and continue to work on selected topics in philosophy of dance, as well as developing new research interests in translation studies.