Manar al-Athar

Patron of Manar al-Athar HRH Princess Dana Firas (Petra National Trust)

Founder

Manar al-Athar is the inspired creation of Judith McKenzie (1957–2019)

Judith McKenzie was University Research Lecturer at University of Oxford and, from 2016 until 2019, principal investigator of the ERC funded research project Monumental Art of the Christian and Early Islamic East: Cultural Identities and Classical Heritage. She lived in a cave while working on The Architecture of Petra (1990), the rock-cut capital of the Nabataeans in Jordan. Her other books include The Architecture of Alexandria and Egypt, 300 BC–AD 700 (2007), for which she won the Archaeological Institute of America Wiseman Book Award, The Nabataean Temple at Khirbet et-Tannur (2 vols, 2013), and The Garima Gospels: Early Illuminated Gospel Books from Ethiopia (2016). She established the Manar al-Athar Digital Archive in 2012, in order to widen access to images of archaeological sites and historic buildings in the Middle East and North Africa.

Current Team

Director
Dr Ine Jacobs

Ine Jacobs is the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Associate Professor of Byzantine Archaeology and Visual Culture at the University of Oxford. She became Director of Manar al-Athar in 2020. Her research interests include Roman and Byzantine architecture and urbanism; the experience and perception of the built environment and its decoration; long histories of the display and reception of sites, statuary, and artifacts; material religion; and the promotion of cultural heritage awareness. She has worked on excavations in Belgium, Italy, the Republic of North Macedonia and Turkey. In 2016 she became the Field Director of the Aphrodisias excavations.

Deputy Director
Dr Tim Penn

Tim Penn is the Lecturer in Roman and Late Antique Material Culture in the Classics Department at the University of Reading. He was an Oxford-based research assistant at Manar al-Athar from 2022 and became deputy director in 2024. He has contributed to fieldwork projects in Italy, the UK, Germany, Turkey, Azerbaijan, Morocco, Egypt, Jordan, and Iran, primarily working as a small finds specialist. His broader research interests include the archaeology of board games; landscape archaeology and funerary landscapes; and archaeological approaches to memory.

IT Development and Management
Mr Jeremy Worth

Jeremy has been involved with the Manar al-Athar project since its conception and is responsible for the development and maintenance of the website and digital asset management system. Jeremy specialises in image management and database systems (such as ResourceSpace), as well as Filemaker database design and development. Jeremy's professional interests include project management, interoperability, requirements analysis and innovation and he has acted as a consultant to a number of departments in relation to web technologies, programming and databases, as well as serving on a number of University project boards.

Research Assistants
Ellie Debs

Ellie Debs is a second-year MPhil student in Late Antique and Byzantine studies at the University of Oxford, having completed her BA in History at Durham University. Her research focusses on the settlements and liturgical practices of the early Christian Near East, with a particular interest in Syria and Lebanon. Her current thesis examines epigraphical and archaeological evidence to ascertain the level of independence exercised by rural clergy in northern Syria, between the third and fifth centuries.

Thomas Draghetti

Thomas Draghetti is a second-year MPhil student in Classical Archaeology at the University of Oxford, having previously completed his BA in Classics at La Sapienza University in Rome. His research focuses on the Late Antique and Early Byzantine periods, with a particular interest in Christian ritual practices and ecclesiastical architecture. He is also passionate about epigraphy and the study of material re-use. Currently, he is working on his Master’s dissertation, which examines the cells of Coptic monks in Late Antiquity from a phenomenological perspective.

Marie Theres Wittmann

Marie Theres Wittmann is a DPhil student in Classical Archaeology at the University of Oxford. She started working for Manar al-Athar in 2024. Her doctoral research focuses on the urban development of North African cities during the Severan dynasty (193–235 CE). Her research interests include Roman and Late Antique architecture and urbanism, the importance of olive oil in the Roman world and the economy of perfume and cosmetics (unguentaria). She has excavated in Germany, Italy, Turkey, Morocco and Tunisia and, since 2024, is Director of an excavation sector in the French-Tunisian project in Sbeïtla (ancient Sufetula), Tunisia.

Collaborators

Dr Mohamed Kenawi

Mohamed Kenawi is a Research Associate at the School of Archaeology and Ancient History, University of Leicester. He was a Researcher and Training Manager at the School of Archaeology, University of Oxford, for the Endangered Archaeology of the Middle East and North Africa project. He was Head Researcher (2011–16), followed by Acting Director (2016–17), of the Hellenistic Centre of Bibliotheca Alexandrina. He taught at the American University in Cairo and at Catania University. He has participated in various archaeological conservation and training projects in Libya, Tunisia, Jordan, Ethiopia, Italy, and Egypt. He currently collaborates on projects with Padua University in Italy and Tübingen University in Germany. He has been collaborating with Manar al-Athar since its foundation in 2012.

Dr Bea Leal

Bea Leal is an art historian with research interests in late antique, early medieval, and early Islamic art. Her PhD thesis from the University of East Anglia, completed in 2016, was on architectural imagery in late antiquity. After this she carried out research on the mosaics of the Great Mosque of Damascus, as part of the project Monumental Art of the Christian and Early Islamic East, based in Oxford's Faculty of Classics. She is a contributor to the Smarthistory.org Arts of the Islamic World resource, and a trustee and curator of the Hungate Medieval Art centre in Norwich (Norfolk, UK).

Dr Andres Reyes

Andres Reyes is a research associate in the Sub-Faculty of Near and Middle Eastern Studies at the Oriental Institute, Oxford. From 1990 until 1993, he was a junior research fellow in Archaeology at St Hugh’s College, Oxford, and from 1993 until 2021, he taught Greek, Latin, and Archaeology at Groton School in Massachusetts. He has written books and articles on the archaeology of Cyprus, Egypt, and Jordan and edited for publication C. S. Lewis’s unfinished translation of Virgil’s Aeneid.

Dr Marlena Whiting

Marlena Whiting is a specialist in the archaeology and socio-cultural history of the Late Antique Near East, with a particular interest in travel infrastructure, pilgrimage, gender, and lived religion. She has held visiting fellowships in Amman and Istanbul, and worked on archaeological excavations in Petra and Jerash, and on projects in Syria, Spain, the United Kingdom, and Finland. She is the co-author of the Manar al-Athar guide to the site of Khirbet et-Tannur (“A Gem of a Small Nabataean Temple”: Excavations at Khirbet et-Tannur in Jordan).

Steering committee

Chair: Bryan Ward-Perkins (Oxford)
Committee members: Alessandra Giovenco (British School at Rome), Joe Greene (Harvard University), John Healey (Manchester University), Ine Jacobs (Oxford University), Sean Leatherbury (University College Dublin), Neil McLynn (Oxford University), Andy Reyes (Oxford University), Christian Sahner (Oxford University), Valeria Vitale (University of Sheffield)

Team Past and Present

Deputy Director (2019–2023) Miranda Williams
Director (2019–2021) Elizabeth Macaulay (The Graduate Center, City University of New York)
Oxford Director (2019–2020) Bryan Ward-Perkins
Director (2012–2019) Judith McKenzie
Deputy Director (2012–2019) Elizabeth Macaulay (The Graduate Center, City University of New York)

Arabic Consultants Haytham Dieck, Mona Habeb, Mohamed Kenawi, Ali Al-Manaser, Diana Sayegh
Research Assistants (2013–2024) Elizabeth Buchanan, Tiffany Chezum, Corso Dominici, James Ford, Olga Grinchenko, Mona Habeb, Meseret Oldjira, Sarah Johnson, Vendi Jukić Buča, Davide Massimo, Zahra Moeini Meybodi, Sophia Miller, Sarah Norodom, Izzi Riglia, Sydney Taylor, Marlena Whiting, Miranda Williams
Oxford Volunteers Victoria Bianchi, Nicole Lee Heberling, Katherine McCreery, Layla McDermott, Tamar Purut, Izzi Riglia, Imbarrakha Mihoob, Surayj Gargoum
Design Editors of Manar al-Athar Booklets Vendi Jukić Buča, Hanna Kim
Honorary Research Associates Ross Burns, Simon Ford, Michael Greenhalgh, Jorrit Kelder, Mohamed Kenawi, Sean Leatherbury, Marlena Whiting
Manar al-Athar Booklets Series Editors Judith McKenzie†, Andres Reyes
Manar al-Athar Monographs Series Editor Judith McKenzie†, Andres Reyes

Regional curators

Anatolia
Curators and editors Olivia Carter, Indyanna Grant, Vendi Jukić Buča, Ellie Debs, Thomas Draghetti, Izzi Riglia, Miranda Williams, Olivia Carter, Indyanna Grant, Vendi Jukić Buča, Izzi Riglia, Miranda Williams
Contributors Ross Burns, Olga Grinchenko, James Howard-Johnston, Vendi Jukić Buča, Ine Jacobs, Sean Leatherbury, Bob Ousterhout†, Jordan Pickett, Efthymios Rizos, Miranda Williams

Balkans
Curators and editors Elizabeth Buchanan, Sydney Taylor, Miranda Williams
Contributors Brad Buchanan, Elizabeth Buchanan, Nicholas Evans, Efthymios Rizos, Mark Whittow

Egypt
Curators and editors Tiffany Chezum, Vendi Jukić Buča, Andres Reyes, Miranda Williams
Contributors Emilio Bonfiglio, Ross Burns, Michael Greenhalgh, Mohamed Kenawi, Zoltan Matrahazi, Judith McKenzie†, Andres Reyes

Ethiopia
Curators and editors Flavia Dal Brollo, Jacopo Gnisci, Katrina Khvesenya, Mathilde Mioche
Contributors Jacopo Gnisci

North Africa
Curators and editors Ellie Debs, Joseph Greene, Vendi Jukić Buča, Sean Leatherbury, Meseret Oldjira, Sydney Taylor, Marlena Whiting, Miranda Williams, Marie Theres Wittmann
Contributors Graeme Barker, Ross Burns, Jane Chick, Mohamed Kenawi, Sean Leatherbury, Anna Leone, Niccolò Mugnai, Peter Nágy, Otto Nieminen, Tim Penn, Joel Bellviure Perez, Ben Russell, Marlena Whiting, Miranda Williams, Andrew Wilson, Marie Theres Wittmann, Edward Zychowicz-Coghill

Caucasus
Curators and editors Olga Grinchenko, Vendi Jukić Buča, Miranda Williams
Contributors Elizabeth Buchanan, Ross Burns, Matthew Kinloch, William Macaulay, Miranda Williams, Edward Zychowicz-Coghill

Syro-Palestine / the Levant
Curators and editors Tiffany Chezum, Vendi Jukić Buča, Ellie Debs, Beatrice Leal, Judith McKenzie†, Nusaybah Mannan, Brandon Merrifield, Sarah Norodom, Tim Penn, Andres Reyes, Sydney Taylor, Miranda Williams
Contributors Emilio Bonfiglio, Ross Burns, Jane Chick, Ellie Debs, HRH Princess Dana Firas, Simon Ford, Joseph Greene, Michael Greenhalgh, Kristina Gwirtzman, Elias Khamis, Beatrice Leal, Sean Leatherbury, George Lewis, Maria Lidova, Ludi Lochner, William Macaulay, Judith McKenzie†, Otto Nieminen, Sarah Norodom, Tim Penn, Andres Reyes, Efthymios Rizos, Christian Sahner, Agnieszka Szymanska, Marlena Whiting, Miranda Williams, Edward Zychowicz-Coghill

Specialist subject curators and editors
Mosaics Sean Leatherbury
Petra Judith McKenzie†

Other collaborators
Robert Bewley, Kate da Costa, Mahmoud Hawari, Shaher er-Rababeh, Nadine Schibille, Bryan Ward-Perkins