Global History Lab | Elisa Prosperetti and Alain Hirwa in conversation

A conversation recorded in connection with the launch of the Global History Lab at CRASSH, University of Cambridge in May 2024.
www.crassh.cam.ac.uk/events/4...
Alain Hirwa is a poet, essayist, and photographer from Rwanda. In 2023, his chapbook of poetry was published by Akashic Books in New York. He currently serves as a lecturer at Texas State University.
In 2018, we met in Kigali. I was teaching the Global History Lab (c.1300 to the present) course, and he was an undergraduate at Kepler University. As part of the Global History Dialogues Project, an initiative of the Global History Lab created by Marcia Schenck, Alain went on to carry out primary source research on the connection between hip hop and free speech in Rwanda. This work, which he credits with making him a researcher, was featured in the recently published anthology, The Right to Research: Historical Narratives by Refugee and Global South Scholars (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2023, co-edited by Marcia Schenck and Kate Reed).
Listen to our brief conversation, in which Alain introduces himself and discusses his journey and his experience with the Global History Lab: “a very mind-opening and inspiring opportunity that gave me a lot of things that I’m currently very grateful for.”
Elisa Prosperetti is an Assistant Professor of International History at the National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University in Singapore.