Meet the Cambridge student that gets paid to sing in the library

Lara Harris, a PhD student at the University of Cambridge, has recently gone viral on TikTok after posting a video of her using the medium of song to close the English Faculty Library.

In the TikTok, Harris sings the library’s closing time announcement to the tune of Good Luck Babe by Chappell Roan, informing students that the library will be closing in 20 minutes.

When asked what inspired her to sing the announcement, Harris said that she was encouraged to by a colleague, and re-wrote the lyrics of the closing announcement to match the tune of Good Luck Babe “literally two minutes before I had made the announcement”. She also commented that making the closing announcements has been her favourite part of working at the English Faculty Library over the past two years, and that she loves it “when people chuckled saying goodbye to me on the way out”.

Harris is currently a PhD student in the ASNAC department, with her research focusing on medieval Scandinavian gynaecology, and a singer-songwriter, with her other TikTok content focusing on her life balancing between her academic and musical pursuits.

Harris has stated that “for me, music isn’t simply a creative pursuit – it’s a means of self-expression”, and that owing to her academic commitments her journey as a musician has been “anything but conventional”.

She has an upcoming EP, entitled Castles, with her next single, titled: What Would I Do? due for release in January 2025 – she can be found on Spotify via this link.

Well, it’s certainly one way to get student’s attention!

Featured image credits: Lara Harris