The Wilkinson – McKenzie International Research Grant
Started in 2020, the Wilkinson – McKenzie International Research Grant commemorates the friendship of two Near Eastern archaeologists, John Donald Wilkinson (1929–2018) and Judith Sheila McKenzie (1957–2019). John Wilkinson was already well-known as a specialist on the archaeology of Jerusalem and the Holy Land when, in 1979, he was appointed Director of the British School of Archaeology in Jerusalem (now the Kenyon Institute). It was here that he met Judith McKenzie, who, arriving from Sydney, Australia, was Annual Scholar of the School for 1981–1982. Both were interested in ancient architecture, and for the rest of their lives, they would consult each other about their different research projects.
Both John Wilkinson and Judith McKenzie studied the later archaeological periods of the Near East, surveying and examining material culture from the time of Alexander the Great in the fourth century BC onward into much later historical periods. But equally important to their careers was a commitment to the development and training of younger students, who often felt constrained in their research by a lack of available funding. Recognising that even modest grants are valuable aids to individual projects which often do not have the profile and backing of large institutions, the Wilkinson – McKenzie International Research Grant was set up to provide postdoctoral researchers, often but not necessarily at the start of their careers, with seeding money to see through particular aspects of their work.
Originally, only one grant of up to £500 was given per year, and the first awardee was selected from a small number of applications in December 2020. Since then, the number of applications received has grown considerably.
Because of this increase, the committee in charge of the Wilkinson – McKenzie International Research Grant currently awards up to £500 each to three applicants of any nationality to assist work in any area of ancient history or archaeology. At a time when research funding has become increasingly difficult to secure, it is hoped that scholars around the world will consider the Wilkinson – McKenzie International Research Grant a valuable resource for the successful completion of their projects.
John Wilkinson 1929-2018
Dr John Wilkinson was a celebrated scholar-priest of his generation who lived in Jerusalem for seventeen years. He was the Dean of Studies at St George’s College in Jerusalem and the Director of the British School of Archaeology (now the Kenyon Institute, CBRL) from 1979 to 1984.
As a scholar he was interested in studying the ancient Jewish and Christian liturgies and the topography of late Roman and Byzantine Jerusalem which inevitably led him to the need of translating early pilgrims’ texts from Latin: Egeria’s Travel to the Holy Land (1971) and Jerusalem Pilgrimage 1099-1185, (1988).
He wrote a monograph on the orientation of churches: From Synagogue to Church. The Traditional Design: Its Beginning, Its Definition, Its End. (2002). In early 1990s, he translated two Georgian travellers’ texts to the Holy Land during which he made friends with the academics in Georgia and in 2000, he founded Friends of Academic Research in Georgia. http://www.farig.org
Judith McKenzie 1957-2019
Judith McKenzie was a Professor of the Archaeology of Late Antique Egypt and the Holy Land at the University of Oxford. She is best known for her articles and books on Nabatean architecture and ancient Alexandria. Her monographs include The Architecture of Petra (1990), The Art and Architecture of Alexandria and Egypt (2007), The Nabatean Temple of Khirbet et-Tannur (2 volumes, 2013) and The Garima Gospels (with Francis Watson, 2016).
In 2010 she led her students into Syria on a tour of the sites of the country right before fighting broke out. She lived in the cave in Petra with the Bdoul when studying Nabatean rock-cut architecture of Petra in the 1980s. Life in a cave in Petra with the Bdoul 1981-1986 is her posthumous book based on the notes of her observations of life in Jordan. In 2012, she founded The Manar al-Athar Digital Archive (http://www.manar-al-athar.ox.ac.uk) based at the University of Oxford.