The EVANFE Database compiles biographical records, based on archival and bibliographical sources, of all women —religious sisters, beatas, tertiaries, and laywomen— associated with the Province of the Rosary of the Order of Preachers between the seventeenth and twentieth centuries. As the first database of its kind, it constitutes a central component of the project. At the same time, it reflects the project’s broader scholarly interest in recovering a subaltern memory that frequently eludes the documentary record: namely, the female perspective on the processes of evangelisation in Ibero-Asia. By bringing together dispersed traces of women’s lives and activities, the database seeks not only to document their presence, but also to illuminate forms of agency, experience, and religious mediation that have often remained marginal or obscured in conventional historiography.
By December 2025, the database had assembled records relating to 320 tertiaries and beatas from the Philippines, China and Japan, chiefly spanning the period from 1633 to 1874. At present, the database is accessible only for internal use by the project team.