The Reza Hosseini Memorial Lecture Series on the Past and Present of the Middle East
Stories to Connect:
The Reza Hosseini Memorial Lecture Series on the Past and Present of the Middle East
The Reza Hosseini Memorial Lecture Series recognises and promotes scholarship on the social, cultural, literary, and economic history and current affairs of people living in the wider Islamicate world, including the Middle East, Iran, Afghanistan, and Central Asia. The series connects individual stories to larger questions on the history and contemporary issues of the Middle East. The series aims to recognise and promote, in particular, microhistories, oral and documentary history, and fieldwork analysis.
The series honours the life and work of Reza Hosseini (1960-2003) who last served as Humanitarian Officer in Iraq. The series launches on the 20th anniversary of the attack on the United Nations Headquarters in Baghdad on 19 August 2003 which killed Reza and 21 colleagues.
Lessons from 2003 Iraq: Twenty years later,with Professor Ghassan Salamé
Jointly organised by the Invisible East Programme and St Antony's College, University of Oxford, with the generous support of the Middle East Centre, the inaugural lecture in the series was held on Tuesday 17 October 2023. Prof Salamé's fitting tribute left many of us inspired, illuminated and touched. The organisers were also grateful to those who came to Oxford - from near and far - to attend the lecture, or joined on Zoom. You can listen to the recording of the lecture here. Prof Salamé shared his personal reflections on the day the UN was bombed 20 years ago- a tragedy in which many of those in attendance had lost friends and loved ones - and his five lessons on how these events have changed the international system.
The Barmakids: A Bridge Between Islamic and Indic Worlds, with William Dalrymple
William Dalrymple, All Souls Visiting Fellow 2023-2024, is the author of the Wolfson Prize-winning White Mughals, The Last Mughal, which won the Duff Cooper Prize, and the Hemingway and Kapucinski Prize-winning Return of a King. He visited Oxford on Tuesday 24 September 2024 to deliver the second lecture in the Reza Hosseini Memorial Lecture Series on the Past and Present of the Middle East.
