About

Ann David gained her Ph.D in Dance Ethnography at De Montfort University, Leicester, funded by a full-time three year award from the AHRC. The research focused on two British Hindu communities in Leicester and London, examining their dance practices within a religious context of temple worship and annual festivals. The thesis discussed issues of ethnic, cultural and religious identity, as well as the influence of Bollywood dance on the classical dance forms and their transmission, and the effects of a growing global culture on more local practices.

Having gained a first honours degree in Education, in 1999 she took an MA in Dance Studies at the University of Surrey, gaining a distinction, and went on to pursue her Ph.D at DMU. She is now Principal Lecturer in Dance at the University of Roehampton, and has recently worked as a Research Fellow on a new international anthropological project examining the religious lives of immigrant groups in London, and funded by the Ford Foundation, USA.(See website at www.surrey.ac.uk/Arts/CRONEM/religious-lives-of-immigrants.htm). She is currently co-investigator for a new AHRC-funded project titled, 'The Southall Story', which looks at the cultural life and history of the Southall area of west London. Ann has worked as a mentor to Kathak dancer Urja Thakore on her Arts Council-funded project, Baharan-Spring. She has given papers at many international conferences and has published widely in cross-disciplinary and dancejournals. She teaches across the undergrduate dance programme as well as on the MA Dance Cluster and is a supervisor of several PhD candidates. She is currently Convener of the BA Dance Studies Programme and in 2010 was awarded a Roehampton Teaching Fellowship for work setting up a new scheme of employability within the undergraduate programme. She is also a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.

Ann has trained in ballet, folk dance, and contemporary dance styles, as well as the Indian classical styles of Bharatanatyam and Kathak. She has published for many years in the South Asian dance journal, Pulse, and was commissioned to write the Arts Council report on Akademi’s Bharatanatyam Conference, Negotiating Natyam, and their 2009 conference on Bollywood dance, Frame by Frame. She has held a Research Fellowship at the School of Oriental and African Studies at London University, where she examined the movement components within Hindu ritual and worship, and has given Research Seminars at Oxford University, as well as Cardiff, Southampton and Surrey Universities. She has also taught undergraduate and postgraduate courses at De Montfort University, Leicester, University of Surrey and Royal Holloway University, London. Her research interests include dance and popular culture; South Asian dance (including classical, folk and Bollywood); dance, culture and identity; dance and religion, and dance ethnography and anthropology.

Professional affiliations include membership of the International Council for Traditional Music (ICTM), the Society of Dance History Scholars (SDHS), the Congress for Research on Dance (CORD), the Society for Dance Research (SDR), and the British Association for South Asian Studies (BASAS.

Ann has been a nominated assessor for two large AHRC grants and is a manuscript reader for several leading journals.