ABOUT Pavlína Marie
ABOUT
Sr Pavlína Marie Kašparová OP is an artist and theologian and has been a member of the Czech Congregation of Dominican Sisters since 2006. She holds a PhD in Fine Art and Theology from Anglia Ruskin University. Currently, she serves as the Director of Studies at The Faraday Institute for Science and Religion, where she actively engages in academic discussions and promotes interdisciplinary connections.
Additionally, Dr Kašparová has been a Psychology Cross-training Workshop Fellow at the University of Birmingham since July 2023, where she continues her exploration of visual language in theology.
She has held the position of Director of Studies at The Cambridge Centre for Christianity Worldwide and is currently a Research Associate at the Margaret Beaufort Institute of Theology since 2022. Her research centers on the material and concrete expressions of religious identity as reflected in bodily appearance. Her interdisciplinary project spans across theology, with an emphasis on spirituality and soteriology, fine art incorporating photography and moving images, and psychology exploring perception and self-awareness.
Background
Dr Kašparová’s academic foundation includes two Master’s degrees in Catholic Theology and Art History, along with a Bachelor’s degree in Design, earned at Palacky University in Olomouc and University Hradec Králové, the Czech Republic.
SELECTED EXHIBITIONS
2021, The Women of The Book, solo project (live performance). Cambridge, UK.
2021, Art Days, collective exhibition, work Ora Pro Nobis. Tallinn, Estonia.
2020, Sustainability Art Prize, collective exhibition, work Gloves Migration Adoption ("fake campaign" – photo collage). Anglia Ruskin University, online.
2019, Fragmentum: Sacred Photography, collective exhibition, work The Tree of Life (photo collage), Ars Sacra festival, Budapest, Hungary.
2019, Perception, collective exhibition, work What Are You Looking At? (photography). BODIES IN MOVEMENT, collective exhibition, work LIFE drawing (photo collage), LoosenArt, Rome, Italy.
PAPERS AND PRESENTATIONS
2023, Art and Theology in Practice (talk), Beer and Theology series, Cambridge.
2023, Living Christian Identity as a Woman (research in progress presentation), CTF Annual Conference, Westminster College, Cambridge.
2022, Art Practice as Interfaith Dialogue (seminar lecture). CCCW/Divinity Faculty World Christianity Seminars series, Cambridge.
Kašparová, P. (2022). Perception of Visual Art in Christian Churches. In: H. Alford, ed., Preaching and the Arts / Predicazione e Arte. Communitas 2021. Rome: Angelicum University Press, pp.33–42.
2020, Religious Women: Double Discrimination (paper). 1st Virtual UACES Conference, online.
2020, The Women of the Book: Building and Application of a Methodology for Living Theology (paper). 10th Jubilee Conference of Junior Theologians and Doctoral Students, Eger, Hungary.
2019, Activism or Preaching? Dynamism of Contemporary Ecclesiastical Art Interventions (paper). 13th Annual Research Student Conference ARU, Chelmsford; Study Day CTF Cambridge.