Richard's research interests are focused around the areas of black British vernacular and popular cultures. He is co-editor of the Cambridge Companion to Global Rap, published by Cambridge University Press in 2025. His research has been published in Critical Studies in Television, Popular Music, Ethnic and Racial Studies, and Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power. His book, UK Hip Hop, Grime and the City, is published by Routledge. Prior to joining Loughborough Richard was a Senior Research Associate at the University of Cambridge.
Richard is Senior Member, Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, and a member of the Arts and Humanities Research Council, Peer Review College.
Richard’s book, UK Hip-Hop, Grime and the City, examines the aesthetic, cultural and commercial practices of black and white, working-class youths in London. Through a combination of ethnography and close textual analysis, this interdisciplinary study considers how young men and women use rap to accommodate themselves to their conditions of urban dwelling and investigates how they contest their social and economic marginalisation through their collaborative cultural work.
Richard was the Principal Investigator on an AHRC funded research project on the Performance of Alternative British Identities through Rap. Over the last 50 years music genres such as hip hop, grime and drill have become central to mainstream popular culture in the UK. The project examined the role that rap culture plays in a range of organisations, funded by local or national government, and how young people in those organisations use rap to perform their identities and represent their communities.
More recently his research has turned to the representation of black Britishness in television drama. He is particularly interested in the use of mental health themes to explore forms of belonging and social wellbeing in multi-ethnic communities. Richard has written for The Guardian newspaper and contributed to programmes for BBC Radio 5 Live and BBC Radio 1Xtra.
Richard convenes the postgraduate course Media Representations, Identity, and Digital Cultures. He also convenes the undergraduate courses Media, Culture, Crime and Constructing Meaning: Texts and Audiences.
Richard welcomes enquiries about doctoral studies in media and culture, postcolonial studies, cultural studies, and the sociology of culture.
Current
- Penny Litchfield. 'Remembering Grenfell: advocating for social justice using rhetoric, embodied and aesthetic practices.'
Completed
- 2020 Thais Sarda. 'The dark side of the internet: a study about representations of the deep web and the Tor network in the British press.'
- 2023 Erica Fletcher. 'An exploration of the London spoken word poetry community.'
- Bramwell, R. and de Lacey, A. (2025) The Cambridge Companion to Global Rap
- Bramwell (2024) Victim behaviour and trauma recovery: reflections on abusive relationships in I May Destroy You. Critical Studies in Television
- Bramwell, R. and Butterworth, J. (2020) ‘Beyond the street: the institutional life of rap’ Popular Music
- Bramwell, R. and Butterworth, J. (2019) ‘“I feel English as fuck”: translocality and the performance of alternative identities through rap’ Ethnic and Racial Studies
- Bramwell, R. (2018) ‘Freedom within bars: maximum security prisoners’ negotiations of identity through rap’ Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power
- Bramwell, R. (2015) UK hip-hop, grime and the city: the aesthetics and ethics of London's rap scenes New York and London: Routledge
- Bramwell, R. (2015) ‘Council estate of mind: the British rap tradition and London’s UK hip-hop scene’ in Williams, J. A. The Cambridge Companion to Hip-Hop Cambridge University Press
- ‘Behind the Brixton riots’ Guardian|Society (6th September 2011)