Annual Research Grants 2021
The PEF Annual Research Grants for 2021 are now closed. Awards will be announced in mid-March.
Because the coronavirus pandemic has made much fieldwork impossible for the near future, we changed our focus for this year towards post-field work and publication costs. This included lab costs, illustration costs, and image license costs. In every other respect the aims of the grants remained the same, to promote research into the archaeology and history, ethnography, anthropology and culture, topography, geology and natural sciences of Palestine and the Levant.
The Committee welcomes interdisciplinary applications relating to the Fund’s aims, as well as those relating to the PEF’s archival collections. Projects must avoid political, religious, or ideological bias, and must respect International laws relating to antiquities and archaeological activity in the Occupied Territories. Grant awards range from about £450 to £2,000.
2020 Field Research Grant Awards
Angelos Papadopoulos, College Year in Athens
“Cypriot and Mycenaean pottery at Tel el Hesi – a Comparative Study”
£750
Claudine Dauphin, Independent
“Sacred Landscapes”: The Ummayyad Syro-Jordanian Hajj Roads to Mecca and their Pilgrim Camps
£1,500
Chris Wilson, University of East Anglia
“Palestinian Psychiatric Patients in Lebanon during the Mandate Period”
£1,033
Diederik Halbertsma, University of Liverpool
“Episodic Labour Mobilisation During the Levant’s ‘Dark Ages’: The View from Khirbet al-Mudayna al-‘Aliya”
£500
Emanuel Pfoh, IMHICIHU-CONICET Buenos Aires
“The Ethnographic Construction of Palestine in the Works of Claude Reignier Conder”
£1,500
James Fraser, University of Sydney
“The Khirbet Ghozlan Excavation Project: Investigating Bronze Age horticulture in the Jordan Valley escarpment.”
£2,350
Mahmoud Hawari, University of Bethlehem
“Khirbat al-Mafjar Archaeological Project, Jericho”
£711
Omar Joseph Nasser-Khoury, Independent
“Phase III: Documentation of the British Museum’s Palestine Textile Collection: A Knowledge Exchange Fellowship 2018-2019″
£1,500
Will. M. Kennedy, Friedrich-Alexander Universitat Erlangen-Nurnberg
“The Petra Hinterland Social Landscapes Project”
£2,000
TOTAL AWARDED IN 2020: £11,844
Follow our grants researchers in the field by visiting our blog.
Reports will be published in PEQ, and blogs will be posted on the PEF blog. Click on the link above to see these reports.
Previous grants awards
£12,000 was available for grant awards in 2019
The following awards were made:
James Fraser:
The Khirbet Ghozlan Excavation Project: Investigating Bronze Age horticulture in the Jordan Valley escarpment. £2,000
Yorke Rowan:
Eastern Badia Archaeological Project: Wisad Pools £3,500
Omar J Nasser Khoury:
Phase II: Documentation of the British Museum’s Palestine Textile Collection: A Knowledge Exchange Fellowship. £2,000
Pascal Flohr:
More than Meets the Eye: Locating Late Neolithic sites on the Kerak Plateau, Jordan. £1,060
Jeffrey Auerbach:
Exploring Palestine, 1865-1885: Public-Private Partnership and the origins of the British Mandate in Palestine. £2,000
£12,000 was available for grant awards in 2018
The following awards were made:
Charlotte Kelsted:
British Women’s Perceptions of Arab and Jewish Child-Rearing Practices and Family Relationships in Mandate Palestine: An Initial Research Trip £450
Yorke Rowan:
Eastern Badia Archaeological Project: Wisad Pools £4,325
Omar J Nasser Khoury:
Documentation of the British Museum’s Palestine Textile Collection: A Knowledge Exchange Fellowship £2,000
Micaela Sinibaldi:
Islamic Bayda Project £2,730
£12,000 was available for grant awards in 2017
The following awards were made:
Crispin Paine:
Religion, Modernity & the Material: Reception of the Holy Land £3,000
Gregory Bilotto:
A study of Fatimid metal Objects in the Keir Collection at the Dallas Museum of Art £500
Alexandra Ariotti:
‘Umm at Tawabin’: A Nabataean/Roman Military Camp, Ghor as-Safi, Jordan £3,000
Bruce Routledge:
Food production and consumption in times of change: the case of Tall Dhiban, Jordan £1,980
Monika Wanis:
Differences in Traditional Health Seeking Practices Between Rural and Urban Negev Bedouin Populations £500
Micaela Sinibaldi:
The Islamic Bayda Project £3,000
The Routledge Philip R. Davies Early Career Publication Award
We are please to announce the winners of the Routledge Philip R. Davies Early Career Publication Award for 2021. Details of the winners and their exceptional research papers are below:
Winner: Mr Joseph Scales (University of Birmingham) ‘Bathing Jewish, Bathing Greek: Developing an Approach to De-Categorising Hellenism and Judaism’
Runner-up: Dr. Assaf Kleiman (Leipzig University) ‘The Cultural Biography of Two Volute Capitals in Iron Age Hazor’
2nd Runner-up: Dr Marieke Dhont (University of Cambridge/Harvard University) ‘The Use of Greek in Palestine: Eupolemus as a Case Study’
This annual award honours the memory of Professor Philip R. Davies, prior Chair of the Fund, who died suddenly and before his time in May 2018. The Award recognises his unique contribution to scholarship, his enthusiasm for academic publishing, and his desire to develop younger scholars. The award encourages early career scholars in producing original, high quality research articles. To this end, rather than a single prize, the Fund offers prizes to the winner and up to two runners up, as well as the chance to publish their articles in the PEF’s own peer-reviewed journal, the Palestine Exploration Quarterly (PEQ). The PEQ focuses on the study of the Levant in the areas of archaeology, history, anthropology, geography, art, and languages.
Who can apply?
The award is open to scholars of all nationalities who have completed their Ph.D within 10 years of the submission deadline.
What is required?
Entries of original, unpublished research up to 6,000 words in length (including footnotes, but not bibliography) in areas covered by the PEQ will be considered for this award. Papers should be of publishable quality, but must not have been previously published or submitted for review in another location.
How to enter?
When the award is announced as open for applications, entries should be sent in an email that indicates the entrants name, contact details, and date of PhD award. Please attach to the email an anonymised PDF version of the article including a 250 word abstract, the article, any supplementary material (illustrations, figures, etc…), and a complete bibliography to the Palestine Exploration Fund at chair.pef@gmail.com.
What is the Prize?
The winner will receive a cash prize of £750, with the first runner up awarded £350 and the second runner up £100. All three winning pieces will be considered for publication in PEQ, subject to the normal peer review process.
The Palestine Exploration Fund/Albright Institute Fellowship
We are pleased to announce that the PEF-AIAR Fellow for 2021 is Dr. Morag Kersel (DePaul University) for her research project “Hidden Histories – the private lives of Levantine Neolithic masks”
London and Jerusalem.
An annual award of £3,000 to support research that requires access to the PEF archives and collection and also time spent in residence at the Albright Institute in Jerusalem. The Fellowship requires a minimum of 10 working days at the PEF in Greenwich, London, and a 1 month minimum stay at AIAR in Jerusalem. The room and half-board at the Institute ($1,200 per month) will come from the award, with the rest a flexible stipend for the other activities. This Fellowship is open to doctoral and post-doctoral researchers of all nationalities. This Fellowship is for a residential period between September and the end of May. The working days at the PEF may be completed anytime from the granting of the award until 31 May.
Queries related to the PEF should be sent to chair.pef@gmail.com. Queries related to the AIAR should be sent to scohen@aiar.org.
