Megan Clark, Egyptology PhD student in our department, has been one of the only two winners of an Egypt Exploration Society Patron’s Award. This award, funded by the donations of the Patron supporters of the EES, is intended to support the research of two UK-based PhD students for a year, funding the presentation of their work on conferences, research trips, or participation in fieldwork.
Megan will use this award to expand her doctoral research on the iconography, identity, archaeological context, function, and modern reception of ancient Egyptian paddle dolls. She will visit museum collections that house paddle dolls in order to build a comprehensive corpus that will allow her to examine them and draw conclusions based on evidence not available in previous studies, and thus to nuance and improve our understanding of these intriguing objects.
Megan said:
I am extremely grateful to the Egypt Exploration Society who have awarded me their annual Patrons' Award. Their support and funding will enable me to carry out further study on Middle Kingdom paddle dolls found in European collections, with my first international research trip currently being organised to Berlin and Munich. I encourage other PhD students to apply for next year's award.