The Gerald Averay Wainwright Fund for Near Eastern Archaeology is based at the Khalili Research Centre for the Art and Material Culture of the Middle East at the University of Oxford.

The Fund aims to encourage the study of non-classical archaeology of the countries of the Middle East. The projects supported are wide ranging; the Fund holds an annual Schools Essay Prize, awards Research Grants to mature scholars and also sponsors a post-doctoral Fellowship.

The University of Oxford's 2011 G. A. Wainwright Schools Essay Prize was awarded to Jack Marsh of Brentwood School, Essex.

The most recent Research Grants were awarded in November 2011, with the successful applicants including Elizabeth Bloxam (Forgotten Landscape: second archaeological survey of the Wadi Hammamat greywacke quarries, Egypt), Amber Hood (Illuminating Early Dynastic Egypt: The application of optically stimulated luminescence dating to refine the relative ceramic chronology of Early Dynastic Egypt) and Rob Hosfield (Connecting the Acheulean World: International Collaborations in the Earlier Palaeolithic of the Sudan).

Previous grants from the Wainwright Fund have assisted the work of many specialists in the field of Near Eastern Archaeology, including:

Douglas Baird (The Boncuklu Project)

Nick Barton (The Origins of the Aterian in North Africa)

Emma Baysal (Technology at Boncuklu Hoyuk)

Ben Gearey (Identifying spatial and temporal relationships between resource exploitation, environment and landscape during the Halaf period: a case study of Domuztepe, southeast Turkey)

Ferran Borrell (Neolithic Heterogeneity: the case of the central Syrian desert)

Alison Damick (Bronze Age Ground Stone Technology and Craft Production in Lebanon)

Claudia Glatz (Cide Archaeological Project - The Bronze Age Project)

Bruce Routledge (Dhiban in the Iron Age IIB Period)

Ian Shaw (Satellite imagery, geophysical survey and excavation at Gurob, southern Faiyum area, Egypt)