Last week, we hosted Prof. Sherene Seikaly from the University of California, Santa Barbara as she gave the Natalie Zemon Davis Memorial Lectures 2026 on the subject of Historical Accompaniment as Method. Prof. Seikaly gave an expansive series of lectures spanning the late nineteenth to the mid-twentieth centuries. Her lectures moved from Sudan, across the Middle East and Eastern Mediterranean, and into Arab presence in mid-twentieth century England. These lectures added detail and colour to three lives: Kantousha, a child in late nineteenth century Sudan suffering from smallpox; Said Shuqair, a Syrian living in Sudan; and Edward Atiyah, an intellectual moving between Lebanon and England. Prof. Seikaly proposed a method of "Historical Accompaniment" in which the historican follows their subject through multiple sources and adds informed speculation to give voice to those who would otherwise be lost to history.
Watch the first lecture: