Dr. Vevian Zaki
Dr. Vevian Zaki joined HMML in 2020 as a Cataloger of Arabic Manuscripts. She holds a BA in Theological Sciences and a MA in Christianity in the Middle East, both from Evangelical Theological Seminary, Cairo, in her native Egypt. She also holds a ThM in New Testament Studies from the Princeton Theological Seminary, NJ, and a PhD in the History and Culture of the Near East from Ludwig Maximilians University, Munich. Prior to joining HMML, Zaki supported cultural heritage research at Ludwig Maximilians University through studying the manuscripts of the Arabic Bible, and at the University of Oxford, United Kingdom, through working on the Arabic manuscripts of St. Catherine’s Monastery, Sinai, Egypt. She has presented at many conferences and is widely published.
In her role at HMML, Zaki focuses on the cataloging of Arabic manuscripts as part of the 2020 grant awarded by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). The NEH grant funds a three-year project to catalog 53,000 digitized manuscripts and create an online database of authors and titles originating from under-represented or little-known literary traditions.
What she enjoys most about her work: “In general, working with manuscripts and all the details involved in the process fascinates me. What is even more fascinating about working at HMML is its mission of preserving this heritage. Part of manuscript preservation is making them available to scholarship, and I am excited about contributing, as a cataloger, to bringing many more rare or underexplored manuscripts to light.”
Stories by Dr. Vevian Zaki