The CACSSS-based ERC project CIPHER: Hip-Hop Interpellation (PI: Prof J Griffith Rollefson) has been shortlisted for a 2022 Times Higher Education (THE) Award for Research Project of the Year in Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences.
CIPHER is a five-year ERC funded project investigating the international spread of hip hop culture and its attendant musical, lyrical, artistic, and performative forms on six continents. Its community-engaged research addresses the central question: why has this proudly localising and authenticising African American music translated so widely to far-flung communities around the globe?
The CIPHER team comprises 6 researchers and a research support officer alongside 3 affiliated MSCA fellows exploring hip hop culture and performance in North America, Africa, Asia-Pacific, South America, and Europe. The project has had major international impact and has caught the imagination of the public with 130,000 Twitter views of the news story announcing the project and a television viewership of 143,000 of the RTÉ feature documentary, Change Makers.
THE Awards are prestigious awards attracting over 500 applications from across the UK and Ireland in 20 categories. For more on the projects outcomes the CIPHER application lists them here.