String topology, originating in the work of Chas and Sullivan in the
late 90's, concerns itself with the algebraic and topological
properties of loop spaces of manifolds. Many interesting connections to
representation theory and symplectic geometry have recently been
established. Hurwitz spaces are moduli spaces of branched covers of
Riemann surfaces. In this talk we will propose a generalization of this
notion that serves as a bridge between the two subjects, and allows for
the construction of operations in string topology governed by the
moduli spaces of Riemann surfaces. Using this construction, we prove a
vanishing theorem for the string topology of classifying spaces.