Research Degrees

Aleksandras Aleksejevas

Dr Aleksandras Aleksejevas, is a sculptor, iconographer, private art tutor, and research advisor. He studied at Kaunas A. Martinaitis Art School from 1991 to 1995 and completed Figurative Sculpture at RACC in London (2010–2015) as well as a Life Drawing course at the Royal Drawing School in London (2011–2012) and a degree in Orthodox Theology (St. Sergius Orthodox Theological Institute, Paris, 2023). He received his PhD from The Prince’s School of Traditional Arts (University of Wales, 2018)

Aleksandras has exhibited his artworks in various countries since 1997. Additionally, he has taught private art classes since 2004 and has been a research advisor at King’s Foundation School of Traditional Arts since 2022. He is also a member of the British Association of Iconographers and the Chelsea Art Society.

His areas of research interest, in which he would be happy to supervise students, include Christian iconography, Old Believers bronze iconography, bronze Christian iconography in general, Byzantine art, and Russian iconography.
Aleksandras is interested in helping students navigate the imagery in icons, guiding them to understand the logic behind the compositions, and teaching them how to interpret the information encoded in the intricate details of each icon more effectively.

Christabel Anderson

Dr Christabel Helena Anderson is an iconographer, writer, teacher and postgraduate research supervisor.  Her BA at SOAS focused on art, architecture and archaeology.  She has been with The King’s Foundation, School of Traditional Arts in London since 2008, awarded the MA (distinction, 2010), and PhD (2022) for her research into new icon design within holy Tradition and the iconography and theology of St Sophrony the Athonite. She teaches Christian iconography, gilding methods and manuscript illumination for the Open Programme.

Christabel’s research interests include Orthodox iconology, the development of Christian iconography and Orthodox Christian theology, early art of Britain and Ireland, art and architecture of the Near and Middle East, the art history and practice of manuscript illumination, gilding techniques, historic pigments and paint making methods. She is a practising icon painter, creating work within the tradition of the Eastern Orthodox Church using designs, methods and materials inspired by sacred iconographic exemplars, the lives of the saints and related liturgical arts ancient and contemporary. With the primary focus of inspiring prayer, each piece is carefully researched, designed and created using hand-prepared materials, most of which she makes herself.

Andreas Andreopoulos

Reverend Dr Andreas Andreopoulos is Associate Professor of Theology and Philosophy at the King’s Foundation School of Traditional Arts and a priest of the Archdiocese of Thyateira and Great Britain. His research and writings cover the study of the Fathers of the Church, Christian Iconography and Symbolism, the study of Liturgy, and modern Orthodox thought. His publications include Metamorphosis: the Transfiguration in Byzantine Theology and Iconography (SVS Press, 2005), The Sign of the Cross: the Gesture, the Mystery, the History (Paraclete, 2006), Art as Theology: from the Postmodern to the Medieval (Equinox, 2007), This is my Beloved Son: The Transfiguration of Christ (Paraclete, 2012), and Christos Yannaras: Philosophy, Theology, Culture (ed.) (Routledge, 2019). He has been leading the study of Orthodox theology at the Master’s and PhD level in the University of Winchester until recently, and he is the founder and editor in chief of a book series, based at Winchester University Press, dedicated to the study of modern Orthodox thought, titled Modern Orthodox Dialogues.

Bilal Badat

Dr Bilal Badat is an archaeologist and art-historian specialising in the history of Islamic calligraphy. Bilal completed his Master’s in Islamic Art and Archaeology at the University of Oxford and wrote his doctorate on the concept of pedagogy and style in Islamic calligraphy at the Prince’s School of Traditional Arts. To support his research, Bilal studied Islamic calligraphy in Istanbul for over five years under master calligrapher Efdaluddin Kılıç, obtaining his calligraphic license, or ijazah, in the thuluth and naskh scripts in 2017. He was the principal investigator in an AIWG-funded project entitled ‘Beauty and Islamic Theology’ (2020-21), which aimed to explore the rich and diverse relationships between theology, art, and aesthetics in the Islamic world. He has lectured on Islamic art and architecture at the University of St. Andrews and the University of Tubingen, where he taught modules on Islamic Art and Architecture, Ethics, and Aesthetics. Currently, he is a Senior Researcher at Barker Langham and supervises research students at the King’s Foundation School of Traditional Arts.

Susana Marin

Dr Susana Marín is a visual artist, researcher, and educator. Her work is inspired by the Guler, Kangra, and early Rajput idioms of Indian painting and by patterns of traditional and sacred geometry. She apprenticed in India with masters from Himachal Pradesh and Rajasthan including Padma Shri Vijay Sharma of Chamba and Manish Soni of Bhilwara. In her studio practice she works with natural pigments and handmade paper, using the techniques and materials of traditional Indian painting. She holds a PhD for her dissertation on the living tradition of Pahari painting from the King’s Foundation School of Traditional Arts in London, where she also teaches Indian miniature painting. She conducts workshops internationally and her work has been exhibited in Europe, U.S.A, and the Indian subcontinent. Her research interest focusses on archetypal female representations in Pahari painting and on early Sanskrit treatises on the arts. She is committed to contribute to the transmission and preservation of traditional Pahari painting.

Linden Peach

Professor Linden Peach FRSA, FEA is a writer and cultural historian specialising in twentieth and twenty-first century, especially Welsh, studies. His recent publications are centred on his interests in pacifism, animal studies, community and cosmology. He has extensive experience of supervising and examining research degrees in the arts and cultural studies.

Emily Pott

Dr Emily Pott is the Director of Research Programmes at the School of Traditional Arts where she has worked since 2007. She holds a BA from the University of California, Berkeley, and a PhD from The Prince’s School of Traditional Arts (University of Wales). Her doctoral research focused on one of the most important early Islamic monuments, the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem (691 CE), considering the original form and ornamentation of the building in relation to nascent Islamic art. She supervises artist-researchers using their creative practice to research many forms of traditional arts, from Nepalese paubha painting to High Qing ceramics to Safavid architecture to Orthodox iconography and works with them to develop artistic research methodologies for the traditional arts. To date, she has supervised 18 research students to completion.

Emily is particularly interested in adapting conventional research to take into account the knowledge used in and generated through arts practice, the relationship of creative engagement through the arts with devotional and spiritual practice, the depth of aesthetic experience, and the qualities of the image which allow it to ‘work’ in ritual and religious contexts. Recent publications focus on these interests.

Sydney Ayers Mercer

Dr Sydney Ayers Mercer is Tutor in Architecture & Urbanism at The King’s Foundation. She teaches across the Foundation’s academic programmes and university partnerships, and has also worked on special projects related to heritage skills training.  She is also Book Reviews Editor for Journal of Urbanism: International research in placemaking & urban sustainability, published by Routledge.

Sydney is an historian of British architecture, design, and the built environment in the widest sense.  Her research focuses on the afterlife of British neoclassical architecture and design in Britain as well as globally, from the eighteenth century to the present day. With a particular focus on the work of eighteenth-century architect Robert Adam, she writes on the history of buildings and the idea of buildings as monuments representing more about the time in which they were listed than of their original making. Sydney also has a particular interest in urban and design history relating to city expansion in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Sydney was previously a postdoctoral research fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities (IASH) at the University of Edinburgh. She completed her PhD at the University of Edinburgh, funded by a PhD Scholarship from the Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain (SAHGB), and holds a BA from Dartmouth College.  Her research has been published in venues such as the Georgian Group Journal and Architecture Beyond Europe Journal. Sydney’s research has been funded by the Sir John Soane’s Museum Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship and the H. Allen Brooks Travelling Fellowship.

Matthew Hardy

Dr Matthew Hardy is Senior Lecturer in Architecture & Urbanism at The King’s Foundation, and a Senior Associate Tutor in the Department for Continuing Education at the University of Oxford. He is responsible for academic programmes at the Foundation, working with several university partners. Matthew has lectured and published widely, editing the book The Venice Charter Revisited in 2011, and is co-founder and co-editor of the Journal of Urbanism: International research in placemaking & urban sustainability, published by Routledge. Previously, he worked to establish INTBAU (International Network for Traditional Building, Architecture & Urbanism) from 2000-2010. He has taught on courses and summer programmes, including for INTBAU, the University of Notre Dame, and elsewhere. He maintained a practice in architecture and urban design in Europe and Australia after registering as an architect in Australia in 1983, and holds a Ph.D. in Architectural History from the University of Wales, a Bachelor of Architecture from the University of Adelaide, and a Diploma from The Prince of Wales’s Institute of Architecture. He is a Fellow of the Royal Australian Institute of Architects and of the Royal Society of Arts, and a Chartered Member of the Royal Institute of British Architects. In the 2022 Queen’s Birthday Honours he was appointed a Member of the Royal Victorian Order.

Wilf Middleton

Dr Wilf Middleton is a Research Associate and Tutor at the King’s Foundation, working on research into the transfer of vernacular and traditional knowledge into modern built environments. Wilf’s PhD from Technical University of Munich looks to the living root bridges grown in Meghalaya, India, inspiring design of buildings that integrate trees, in structural and other ways. Wilf’s areas of interest include tree and timber mechanics, digital tools, trees in the built environment, and traditional knowledge systems that make use of trees and timber.

Simon Sadinsky

Dr Simon Sadinsky is an Executive Director at the King’s Foundation, overseeing the organisation’s education, health and other charitable activities. In addition to his role at The King’s Foundation, he serves on the Governing Board of the Global Centre on Healthcare and Urbanisation at Kellogg College, University of Oxford, is a Research Fellow at the University of Grenoble, a Professor of Practice at the University of Wales and sits on the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Craft. Prior to joining the King’s Foundation, Simon worked within the community development sector in the UK, US and internationally. He holds an MSc in Population and Development from the London School of Economics, an MA Urban Policy from the University of Illinois-Chicago, a BA Political Science from Colorado College and has recently passed his viva for a PhD in Urban Studies at the University of Glasgow.