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.