Franklyn Addo is a frontline practitioner, researcher and writer. His expertise is in youth violence and exploitation, as well as rap music and youth cultures, and he is an occasional contributor to The Guardian, The I and other outlets. His BSc in Sociology and MA in Cultural Studies feed into his work in the areas of crime, justice, race, culture and music. Franklyn has for many years participated in the arts while working to support vulnerable young people in contexts from education to criminal justice. He most recently managed a hospital-based programme that helps to rehabilitate survivors of stabbings and shootings in collaboration with statutory and voluntary partners. Franklyn has served as an expert in cases involving ‘gangs’, rap music, the digital domain, and colloquial language.
Alex de Lacey is a Lecturer in Popular Music at Goldsmiths, University of London. His research focuses on performance in grime and hip-hop, and his first monograph, Level Up: Live Performance and Creative Process in Grime Music, will be published with Routledge in 2023. Alex has presented his research at the Royal Musical Association, International Association for the Study of Popular Music, European Hip Hop Studies Network and various other fora. His scholarly work has appeared in Global Hip Hop Studies, Popular Music History and the Radio Journal. Alex also writes as a journalist, with articles for Red Bull, Passion of the Weiss, Songlines, Complex and Keepin It Grimy. Alex is an active participant in the London grime scene as a DJ and broadcaster.
Andrea L. Dennis is Associate Dean of Faculty Development and Martin Chair of Law at the University of Georgia School of Law where she teaches criminal law, evidence, family law, criminal procedure and juvenile law. Previously, she served as an assistant federal public defender in the District of Maryland. Her scholarship explores criminal and juvenile defense lawyering, race and criminal justice, and the impact of criminal justice on the lives of children and youth. Practitioners, courts and media nationwide have cited her seminal legal article on the use of rap lyrics as criminal evidence. She is a co-author of Rap on Trial (The New Press 2019), which examines the issue in depth.
Samuel Augusto Escobar has an LLB and a PG Diploma in Criminal Law from Universidad del Rosario and an MSc in Criminology and Criminal Justice from the University of Edinburgh. He is a Professor at Universidad del Rosario's Law School where he teaches General Criminal Law and Media and Crime. His research interests lie in the sociology of punishment and of media justice.
Lambros Fatsis is a Senior Lecturer in Criminology at the University of Brighton. Fusing cultural criminology and Black radical thought, his published and ongoing research focuses on police racism and the criminalisation of Black music (sub)culture(s), from the era of colonial slavery to the present day. His writing on the policing of UK drill music won the first-ever Blogger of the Year Award from the British Society of Criminology and an Outstanding Research and Enterprise Impact Award from the University of Brighton. Lambros is also a member of the Prosecuting Rap Expert Network, made up of scholars and experts in rap and Black youth culture who act as defence experts in court cases that involve the use of rap as evidence.
Keir Monteith QC has been working in the criminal courts since the last century; he defends in high-profile cases, some of which are of constitutional significance, and also sits as a part time Crown Court judge. In recent years the State has increased its use of Rap and Drill to prosecute Black defendants. See also: https://www.gardencourtchambers.co.uk/barristers/keir-monteith-qc/sao
Erik Nielson is Professor of Liberal Arts at the University of Richmond, where he teaches courses on African American literature and hip hop culture. In addition to his scholarly work, he writes regularly for popular outlets, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Atlantic and Rolling Stone, and is routinely interviewed by a wide range of national media organisations. He has been lead author on three amicus briefs for the US Supreme Court – which included support from artists such as Killer Mike, Chance the Rapper, Meek Mill, T.I., Big Boi and Luther Campbell – and he is frequently called to testify as an expert witness in criminal cases involving rap lyrics as evidence. His most recent book, Rap on Trial: Race, Lyrics, and Guilt in America, co-authored with Andrea L. Dennis, has been cited in efforts at the state and federal level to introduce legislation limiting the use of rap lyrics as evidence. The book was a finalist for the Library of Virginia literary awards, and winner of the Hugh M. Hefner Foundation's First Amendment Award.
Abenaa Owusu-Bempah is Associate Professor of criminal law and criminal evidence at the LSE. Her scholarship focuses on criminal procedure, the law of evidence, and criminal law, with a particular emphasis on fair trial rights and the participatory role of defendants in criminal proceedings. She is author of the book, Defendant Participation in the Criminal Process (Routledge 2017). Abenaa's current research explores the admissibility and use of rap music as evidence in criminal trials in England and Wales. She also acts as an expert in cases where the prosecution seek to rely on rap music as evidence in criminal proceedings.
Eithne Quinn is a professor in the School of Arts, Languages & Cultures at The University of Manchester. She is the author of Nuthin' but a G Thang: The Culture and Commerce of Gangsta Rap (Columbia University Press) and led an AHRC project on Prosecuting Rap: Criminal Justice and UK Black Youth Expressive Culture (2021–2022). Her current work focuses on racism and inequalities in the English and Welsh justice system, with a forthcoming article in The British Journal of Criminology and a co-authored report about racism in the judiciary. She has worked as a rap expert in UK court cases since 2008 and is a full member of the Academy of Experts.
Rafael Quishpe is a Researcher at Universidad del Rosario's Law School and the German–Colombian Peace Institute (CAPAZ, in Spanish). He holds an MA in Peacebuilding (Universidad de los Andes), and has been working in the last decade in research projects related to ex-combatants reintegration, post-conflict reconciliation and the role of music and cultural production in wartime. Currently, is he the director of the project ‘Music library of armed conflict and peace’, funded by the National Center of Historical Memory and MINCIENCIAS (CT 833 – 2020).
Latoya Reisner is a music industry professional and academic researcher. She has worked with musicians from across the Manchester region, brand marketing for an independent music label, and as a talent manager and associate producer for the creative company Thirty Pound Gentleman. Latoya holds an MA in Criminology from Manchester Metropolitan University, and focused on the Manchester Grime scene for her dissertation. She was a Research Associate on the AHRC-funded project Prosecuting Rap: Criminal Justice and UK Black Youth Expressive Culture at the University of Manchester.
Kamila Rymajdo is a journalist and academic. As a journalist, she predominantly writes about music, popular culture and the Polish diaspora for imprints such as Vice, i-D, Dazed and Mixmag. In 2021, she co-founded SEEN, a Manchester based music magazine to represent global majority and marginal communities in the city and beyond. Previously, she worked at The Skinny North as a music editor. As an academic, she has worked at the University of Manchester as a research associate, was a visiting research fellow at University of Lodz and has guest lectured at Manchester Metropolitan University and UCLan. Her academic writing has been published in edited collections including Heading North (Palgrave Macmillan), Popular Music in the Post-Digital Age (Bloomsbury) and Made in Poland (Routledge).
Tilman Schwarze is Lecturer in Criminology at the University of Glasgow. His publications have so far particularly explored the relationship between territorial stigmatisation and gentrification-centred urban redevelopment on Chicago's South Side. Informed by scholarship on critical spatial theory and racial capitalism, Tilman's ongoing research focuses on the multiple ways through which urban communities resist such stigmatisation processes and neoliberal agendas of growth and redevelopment. As part of a collaborative research project funded by a Royal Society of Edinburgh Workshop Grant, his research also explores the multiple ways in which security and space are connected in theory and practice.
Juan Francisco Soto is a Professor at Universidad del Rosario's Law School. He holds an LLM in Public International Law from Leiden University and an LLB from the Universidad del Rosario. He has experience in human rights litigation and focuses his research and teaching on legal theory, transitional justice and the relations between law and arts.
John Street is Emeritus Professor of Politics at the University of East Anglia. He has written extensively about the relationship between politics and music, including the book Music and Politics. Most recently, he has been leading an AHRC project on the history and politics of the English protest song (oursubversivevoice.com). He is a member of the Editorial Group of Popular Music.
Joy White is a Senior Lecturer in Applied Social Sciences at the University of Bedfordshire and the author of Terraformed: Young Black Lives in the Inner City. Joy has presented her work at a number of UK and international institutions including The Post-Windrush Generation: Black British Voices of Resistance, University of Cambridge; Subcultures Network Conference Panel, University of Reading; The Place of Music, Loughborough University; Annual Black Studies Lecture, University of Nottingham; Stanford University Forum for African Studies; Urban Culture and Political Engagement, Tropenmuseum, Amsterdam; 3rd International Research Conference on Cultural and Creative Industries University of Antwerp; and Eastern Sociological Society, 5th International Digital Storytelling Conference, Hacettepe University. Her previous work includes Urban Music and Entrepreneurship: Beats, Rhymes and Young People's Enterprise, one of the first books to foreground the socio-economic significance of grime music. Recent publications include ‘Growing up under the influence: A sonic genealogy of Grime’, in Narratives from Beyond the UK Reggae Bassline: The System is Sound, and (with Jonathan Ilan) Ethnographer Soundclash: A UK Rap and Grime Story. Joy has also written for The Quietus, The Conversation and Prospect.
