Grime and University: Language and the Negotiation of Black Cultural Alignment among British University Students

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There has been a great deal of recent interest in increasingthe participation of Black people in higher education, andthe intervention of high-profile grime artists has intensifiedthis (e.g. the Stormzy scholarships at Cambridge, BigNarstie's talks on grime music and mental health atuniversities across the UK). Grime is itself hugely importantas a cultural formation for young British Black people, andits spread beyond the original inner-city sites of itsproduction has meant that for young Black and mixed-racepeople in non-urban and/or mainly white areas, grime hasbecome a major source of learning about the meanings ofBlackness. But at the same time, the socialisation and themodels of personhood that grime offers can contrastsharply with the mainstream cultural socialisation providedat university. Figures like Stormzy, Big Narstie and Akalaseek to draw grime and HE closer, and in the US, Hip Hopstudies is well-established in university curricula. But in theunspectacular practices of everyday university life in theUK, how do young people themselves actually negotiatethe relationship between these two formations and thesubjectivities they promote? My project will approach thisquestion with interactional sociolinguistics and linguisticethnography, and it is motivated by my own experienceand development as a non-urban, mixed-race personnavigating the potentially conflicting meanings of grimeand university.