A powerful new book that offers a fresh perspective on migration, identity and creative expression was launched yesterday at the University of Cambridge. Titled Crossings: Migrant Knowledges Migrant Forms, the book is co-edited by Kenyan academic Dr Natalya Din Kariuki, Professor Shubha Mukherji of Cambridge University and Rowan Williams, the former Archbishop of Canterbury.
The book brings together voices from across Africa, Asia, Europe, the Caribbean, the Middle East and the Americas. It explores how people carry knowledge, memory and form when they move. Not just borders and displacement, but food, music, language, stories and ways of being. It is a deeply reflective and timely collection for a world still struggling with how to talk about migration.
The launch took place at Magdalene College, Cambridge, and gathered writers, artists, academics and cultural practitioners from around the world. It was not a standard academic event. It was a full day of conversation, listening and exchange, rooted in real experience and deep thinking.
Dr Natalya Din Kariuki, who teaches at the University of Warwick, spoke about how migration shapes more than just movement. It also shapes form, the ways people tell stories, express identity and make meaning from memory. She spoke with quiet authority and clarity, drawing from her own journey and the long histories that inform it.
Professor Mukherji and Rowan Williams reflected on how the book was built. It is not about responding to headlines, but about offering space to think about what migration creates, not just what it takes away.
For South Africa, where movement and belonging are lived realities, this book arrives with particular relevance. From exile and return, to artistic exchange, to everyday crossings of language and place, migration is part of how the country thinks, creates and remembers.
Crossings: Migrant Knowledges Migrant Forms will be published by punctum books later this year and made available globally in both print and open access.