Kenyan scholar Dr. Natalya Din-Kariuki and Amnesty International-Kenya executive director Irungu Houghton during the launch of Crossings: Migrant Knowledges, Migrant Forms in Nairobi on July 29, 2025./HANDOUTKenyan scholar Dr. Natalya Din-Kariuki on Tuesday launched her book titled Crossings: Migrant Knowledges, Migrant Forms in Nairobi.
Co-edited with Professor of Early Modern Literature and Culture Subha Mukherji and Bishop Rowan Williams, the book acknowledges and appreciates a wider spectrum of views about migration, particularly its relation to art.
It brings together activists, artists, scholars, and migrants with diverse histories to explore the correlation between experience of migration and knowledge.
The launch, which was hosted by British High Commissioner Neil Wigan at his residence, brought together diplomats, academics, creatives, and civil society leaders, who participated in an intellectual exchange on the migration topic.
Among those who attended were strategic communications expert Gina Din, Supreme Court judge Isaac Lenaola, who is also president of the International Association of Refugee and Migration Judges, Senior Counsel Githu Mungai, UN Resident Coordinator Dr Stephen Jackson, Belgium Ambassador to Kenya Peter Maddens and outgoing Commissioner for Refugee Affairs in Kenya John Burugu.
The event was headlined by a conversation between Dr. Din-Kariuki and human rights advocate Irungu Houghton, who serves as Amnesty International executive director, exploring the dynamics in migration.
Dr. Din-Kariuki, who is an Associate Professor in the Department of English and Comparative Literary Studies at the University of Warwick, spoke about how migration shapes identity, memory, and belonging.
In conceptualising the book, Dr. Din-Kariuki noted that one of the most striking things about migration was the way in which migrant knowledge takes different forms, such as photography, theatre, music and food.
On his part, Houghton said the book provides readers a reminder that movement is not just a headline or a statistic.
“It is history. It is family. It is power,” he said.
Houghton urged the audience to rethink migration not as a threat but as a defining part of the human experience, particularly within Africa.
The evening also included a message from co-editor Dr. Williams, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, and a performance by the youth orchestra Ghetto Classics.
In his message, Williams said the idea to write the book originated at a conference in Cambridge in 2019, which was first conceived by Mukherji.
“The editors discovered a shared interest in bringing together academic and historical studies of the ways in which cultures, knowledge, art, music, cuisine and individuals, migrate from context to context with the living experience of migrants from various backgrounds. The result was a memorable and distinctive colloquial, in which a real diversity of voices could be heard,” Williams said in the message delivered by High Commissioner Wigan.
Williams acknowledged Dr Din-Kariuki’s role in writing the book.
“I want to say what a delight it has been to have as one of our editors a particularly brilliant young Kenyan scholar, who has done far more than her share of heavy labour in putting this volume together,” he said.
The World Migration Report 2024 indicated that the estimated number of international migrants has increased over the past five decades.
The total estimated 281 million people living in a country other than their countries of birth in 2020 was 128 million more than in 1990 and over three times the estimated number in 1970, it said.
