Judith McKenzie

McKenzie studied archaeology, chemistry and English (Greek and ancient history) at the University of Sydney. McKenzie completed her PhD in 1986 at the University of Sydney, spending extended periods of time in Petra, Jordan, in the 1980s.[4] Her thesis was titled The Architecture of Petra[5] and was published by Oxford University Press in 1990.[6]

McKenzie was an annual scholar at the British School of Archaeology in Jerusalem. She held a Rhys-Davids Junior Research Fellow,[7] followed by a British Academy postdoctoral research fellow at the St Hugh's College, Oxford.[8][9] She was a Queen Elizabeth Fellow at the University of Sydney and then at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton.[5]

From 2003, McKenzie directed the Khirbet et-Tannur Nabataean Temple Project.[10] In 2016, she received a European Research Council Advanced Grant for the project Monumental Art of the Christian and Early Islamic East: Cultural Identities and Classical Heritage.[11][12] McKenzie directed the Manar Al-Athar project, which provides an open access image archive of the Middle East.[2][13][14]

McKenzie's 2007 book The Architecture Of Alexandria And Egypt was awarded the James R. Wiseman book award by the Archaeological Institute of America in 2010,[15] which described the monograph as a "a monumental accomplishment".[16] McKenzie's work had been instrumental in understanding how ancient architecture influences later buildings,[17][18] particularly the influence of the Pharos, the lighthouse of Alexandria.[19]

McKenzie worked on the Garima Gospels, publishing a volume on them with Francis Watson in 2016.[20] The book is the first to reproduce all the illuminated pages in colour. McKenzie also curated an exhibition on the gospels, The Hidden Gospels of Abba Garima, Treasures of the Ethiopian Highland, at the Ioannou Centre, Oxford in 2017.[4]

McKenzie died on 27 May 2019 at the age of 61.[21][22][23]