Jennifer Webb

Biography

Jennifer M. Webb is an internationally recognised expert on Bronze Age Cyprus, an area of research in which she has been involved for over 40 years. Her doctoral dissertation, Ritual Architecture, Iconography and Practice in the Late Cypriot Bronze Age, was published in 1999. From 1990 to 2007, with David Frankel (FAHA), she directed major Australian excavation projects at Marki, Deneia and Politiko in Cyprus. In addition to publishing these projects, in 2009 Jenny and David published excavations undertaken by James Stewart at two Bronze Age cemeteries at Karmi in 1961; in 2011 they co-published, with Dr G. Georgiou of the Department of Antiquities of Cyprus, an Early Bronze Age cemetery at Psematismenos; and in 2013 they published a monograph on excavations by P. Dikaios at a Middle Bronze Age mining settlement at Ambelikou in 1942. Jenny has also published six volumes on public collections of Cypriot antiquities in Australia and the UK and contributed to several others.

Since 2009 Jenny has served as co-Editor-in-Chief (with David Frankel) of the monograph series Studies in Mediterranean Archaeology (SIMA). This series is a major publisher of volumes on the archaeology of the eastern Mediterranean and plays an important role in promoting the work of younger scholars in Cyprus and elsewhere. Since becoming Editor-in-Chief, she has presided over the publication of more than 40 volumes.

Jenny received an Australian Prime Minister’s Centenary Award for services to Australian society and the humanities (2003) and was made a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) in 2017 for ‘significant service to education, particularly to archaeology, as an academic, researcher and author, and to the community’. She has a Hellenic Distinction for services to Greek culture awarded by the Greek Community of Melbourne (1998) and is an Honorary Life Member of the Cypriot Community of Melbourne and Victoria (1991).

Jenny was appointed an Adjunct Professor at La Trobe University in 2015, following her retirement from a full-time position, and has been a Professorial Research Fellow of the University of Cyprus, Nicosia, since 2015. She is a Member of the Steering Committee of Postgraduate Cypriot Archaeology (PoCA) and continues to be involved in the supervision of postgraduate students in both Australia and Cyprus. She has had a long association with the Archaeological Research Unit of the University of Cyprus through numerous collaborations with academic colleagues and is currently working with G. Papasavvas, V. Kassianidou, A. Charalambous and C. Hadjigeorgiou on a project funded by an internal research grant from the University of Cyprus. She has also been working, in collaboration with the Department of Antiquities of Cyprus, on the publication of 80 Middle Bronze Age tombs excavated at Lapithos in 1913 and 1917. This project has already resulted in two monographs (published in 2018 and 2020) and a third is in preparation.

Jenny has an extensive list of publications on Cypriot archaeology which includes 25 authored and edited monographs and over 140 book chapters and journal articles.