Lizzie Bowes is a Research Associate in the University of Westminster’s Black Music Research Unit, supporting Dr Mykaell Riley with the rollout of the national Beyond the Bassline exhibition at the British Library. She comes to Westminster with three years of experience in outreach and widening participation at Trinity College, Cambridge, and has interests in community facing work, social activism and equity in higher education. External to her work at the BMRU, Lizzie is a first year AHRC-funded PhD student at the University of Bristol, working across the Departments of Music, English, and affiliated with the University’s Centre for Black Humanities.Her project considers a sub-genre of UK rap known as conscious rap, thinking about longer-form rap albums with politically conscious overtones as works of Black-British autofiction. She is interested in the ways in which UK rap artists craft narratives about themselves, their cultures and communities, and the creative licence they allow themselves when telling their stories.