The Balkan Women Archive · Vol. I · MMXXVI

Balkan Women History

Recovering the record, one life at a time

By Era

Two and a half thousand years, in five chapters

c. 4th–1st century BC

Antiquity

Illyrian and Thracian queens, warriors, and priestesses at the dawn of the written record — Teuta, Audata, Cynane.

5th–12th century

The Byzantine Era

The Balkans under Constantinople, where empresses like Theodora and Irene shaped an empire that reached the Adriatic.

12th–15th century

Medieval Kingdoms

Serbian, Bosnian, and Bulgarian courts — queens, regents, nun-poets, and diplomats between Christendom and the rising Ottomans.

16th–18th century

The Ottoman Centuries

Life and letters across an empire — and on its Adriatic edges, like the poet Anica Bošković of Dubrovnik.

19th–20th century

Nation & Modernity

Writers, reformers, soldiers, and record-breakers — from Milunka Savić to Nadia Comăneci.

All eras

The Full Archive

Browse every recovered life in one place, in chronological order.

See it on a timeline

From 230 BC to the present

The Learn page lays every figure out on a single timeline, so students can see how the eras connect across more than two thousand years.

Open the timeline