Thea Constantinou wins Music Department Undergraduate EDI Prize 2024/25

The prize is awarded for outstanding work integrating Equality, Diversity and Inclusion themes into an undergraduate written submission for a Music module. Thea is a second-year student in Japanese Studies and a welcome visitor to the Music Department for this year’s Studies in Popular Music module.

Thea’s winning entry was an essay entitled “‘Comfortable in My Skin’: Identity, Sexuality, and Genre inBeyoncé’s Renaissance.” The prize judging panel complimented its sophisticated analysis of the album’s sonic, visual and performance dimensions, and its compelling contribution to understanding intersections of race, gender, and sexuality, particularly within environments where queer and Black identities are often marginalised.

The award comes with a prize of £100. It is awarded annually and welcomes submissions of essays, research reports, and musical compositions.

This year’s prize again attracted numerous submissions of excellent quality. Particular congratulations also go to Dana Al Tajer and Christopher Butler-Cole, who were awarded Commendations for their submissions, both final-year dissertations focusing on Western Classical Music in Bahrain and Fanny Hensel’s Miriam’s Song of Praise, respectively.