Associate Professsor Kenneth Sheedy, Director of Macquarie’s Australian Centre for Ancient Numismatic Studies (ACANS) has been invited to take up a prestigious ‘double’ fellowship in Oxford from July this year, making him the first Australian to be offered the fellowship since the beginning of the scheme in 1977.
The Robinson Visiting Scholarship at the Heberden Coin Room of the Ashmolean Museum in association with the Kraay Visitorship at Wolfson College is offered each year to enable scholars the opportunity to pursue their studies away from the day-to-day demands of their own museum or university.
Thrilled by the invitation, Kenneth says that it’s always very satisfying to have your research recognised in other countries.
“At the same time it’s fantastic to have international recognition for the research being done here,” he said. “It has been a key goal to establish ACANS as being one of the world’s leading numismatic research centres.”
Kenneth will use the time in Oxford to further his work on an ARC funded project, A Spring of Silver, a study of archaic Athenian coinage, the silver mines of Laurion and the political economy of archaic Athens.
“It is clearly an opportunity to build research links between ACANS and Heberden Coin Room, and the numismatic community in the United Kingdom, said Kenneth. “But it also offers the chance to study the relationship between the Ashmolean’s Heberden Coin Room, as a museum collection and research centre, and Oxford University.”
Kenneth explains that the staff of the Coin Room also teach at the university and play an active part in guiding post graduate research.
“I am keen to see that ACANS has an important role in the teaching and research life of our university,” he said.