PROJECT: The Princeton Ethiopian, Eritrean, and Egyptian Miracles of Mary Project

The Princeton Ethiopian, Eritrean, and Egyptian Miracles of Mary (PEMM) project is a comprehensive resource for the 1,000+ “miracle stories” written about and the 2,500+ images painted of the Virgin Mary in these African countries, and preserved in Geʿez between 1300 and the present. It was developed by collaborators in the Department of Comparative Literature and Department of African American Studies at Princeton University.

PEMM was recently awarded the 2025 Digital Humanities and Multimedia Studies Prize by the Medieval Academy of America. The award committee noted, “This project truly achieves the most important goals of digital resources: sustainability, usability, and a commitment to the ongoing preservation and access to often-overlooked and unknown stories, texts, and histories. We applaud this monumental achievement.”