Lancaster University Digital Archive on Women’s Iconography

This year the Lancaster University launched the first ever digital archive of women’s iconography in the 21st Century, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. The archive encompasses Traditional Iconography as well as Iconography-Inspired Sacred Art, aiming to document the lives and spiritual experiences of women iconographers across the world, the motivations and techniques behind their works.

The team developing the digital archive is lead by Dr Azelina Flint, a Christian academic affiliated with Lancaster University and Maynooth University. Initially, we found out about her and the archive through Facebook groups, such as Iconographers Worldwide, where she has reached many other iconographers as well. Before the official launch of the archive, we reached out to Dr Flint through email interested to participate in the digital collection. After several discussions we gathered 20 original works by Maria Zaharieva, detailing their size, origin date and location, as well as other information. Additionally, we wrote a brief biography about Maria’s professional life in the world of iconography- detailing her introduction to iconography, growth, techniques and her life in the UK as an orthodox artist. Maria is featured on the Traditional Iconography page within the archive, you can find the article and the archived works through this link.

The archive launched on 10/03/2025, with an event featuring talks from various artists participanting in the archive. Unfortunately, we could not attend this in person but instead we joined the online session, which we thought was very informative and enjoyed the thorough exploration of the featured artists and the inspirations behind the works. We are pleased that Maria is now part of this wonderful project and want to give our thanks to Dr Azelina Flint and her team, and we are greatly looking forward to their future projects.