2025 KHORSHED JUNGALWALA MEMORIAL LECTURE

FEZANA Religion Education Committee (REC) Invites You to

2025 KHORSHED JUNGALWALA MEMORIAL LECTURE

The transformative impact of Zoroastrian women in the 21st century

Presented by

Dr. Paulina Niechciał

Saturday November 8, 2025

9am PST, 11am CST, 12noon EST

 

Abstract:

This lecture focuses on women in Zoroastrianism, who—due to modern social and cultural changes—have thrived outside the domestic sphere and assumed increasingly important roles within their communities. Drawing on research conducted with Zoroastrians in the United States, this lecture will highlight how women contribute to the preservation, interpretation, and development of their religious tradition, both within the family and in public life.

About Dr. Paulina Niechciał

Paulina Niechciał is an assistant professor in the Center for Comparative Civilization Studies at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland. She holds a master’s degrees in ethnology and in Iranian studies, and a doctorate in Sociology, earned with a dissertation based on field research in Iran, which examined the processes of constructing the collective identity of contemporary Zoroastrians in Tehran. She also studied Persian language and literature at the International Center for Persian Studies at the University of Tehran in Iran, and was a visiting professor at Utica University, the University of Rochester, and the Academy of Sciences in Tajikistan. She was the recipient of a scholarship of the Polish Minister of Science and Higher Education for outstanding young scholars.

Her academic pursuits are centered on the study of minorities and identity, anthropology and sociology of religion, enriched over time by interests in diaspora and gender studies. She is interested in contemporary cultures of Iran, Afghanistan, and Tajikistan, and also acquired an experience of a translator and interpreter of Persian and Dari. She is the author of many articles published in academic journals, book chapters and the book Zoroastrian Minority in Modern Tehran: On Collective Identity in the Context of Shi’a Domination, published in Polish in 2013. She also appreciates participating in various outreach projects to popularize academic knowledge.

In 2019, as a recipient of the Kosciuszko Foundation Fellowship, and hosted by Department of Central Eurasian Studies the at Indiana University in Bloomington, she conducted fieldwork within her research project ‘Lived Religion’ in the Context of Migration: The Case of Zoroastrian Women in the USA that resulted in her recent book, entitled Zoroastrian Women in the United States of America: Practicing Lived Zoroastrianism in a Diaspora. Recently she was a visiting scholar the Department of Anthropology of the SUNY University at Buffalo, conducting a research among women of Polish American descent.

Purchase Zoroastrian Women in the United States of America:  https://a.co/d/egPopDE

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