This project focuses on the question of Whiteness/race, which was not addressed in the larger project. Dr. Joanna Krotofil (Jagiellonian University) and I trace how Polish White Female Converts strategically deploy their Whiteness in different multiracial and transnational settings. This project is funded by the 2022 American Academy of Religion Collaborative International Research Grant. We have had an article accepted by Sociology of Religion.

(with Dr. Joanna Krotofil (Jagiellonian University)) We investigate the consequences of the lockdown for pluralist Muslim women.

Our talk at George Mason University:

At #AAR21 we presented two papers from this project: (1) & (2)

Read our 2021 article in Religions.

Our research recruitment poster is here.

This involved my contributions to the annual Islamophobia in Europe Report in 2017, 2018, and 2019, as well as my chapter about representations of Islam in Polish media published in the Handbook of Religions and Journalism (2020).

A collaborative investigation into identities of Polish women converts who live in Poland or the UK. We are writing a book together. As of 2022, we had two articles accepted: one by Sociology of Religion and one the Journal of Contemporary Religions.

This project comprises a book, Muslim Women in Virtual Space (Routledge, 2014); journal articles in The Muslim World, Contemporary Islam, Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, and Online: Heidelberg Journal of Religions; and a book chapter in the anthology Media, Gender and Religion (2013).

"Perhaps scholar Anna Piela describes it best when she writes that covering rankles and insults Westerners who see the women who wear them as 'stubborn refuseniks of the opportunities that the West evidently affords women.'” more

"Anna Piela, the author of Wearing the Niqab, says: 'What is striking here is that this dichotomy is used by both detractors of the niqab, who reduce it to Arab ethnic dress without significance for Islamic practice, and its advocates who, on the basis of various Hadith, identify it as one of the outfit styles worn during the lifetime of the Prophet (and therefore rooted in Islamic history), preferable over ‘ethnic’ dress which may be insufficiently modest.'” more

“White people are considered unthreatening in the U.S. and Western Europe, and so they are given much more freedom to wear whatever they wish,” said Anna Piela, author of “Wearing the Niqab” and a visiting scholar at the department of religious studies at Northwestern University. more

"Some Muslim women told researcher Anna Piela that the pandemic allowed them to feel more comfortable adopting the niqab, which they had wanted to do before." more

I was invited by the program's author, Ruchi Tandon, to share some findings from my research on how women who wear the niqab are dealing with the pandemic, social distancing, and widespread mask-wearing.

"Dr Anna Piela, an academic and author of Wearing The Niqab (out next January), has reinterviewed some of her contributors since the start of the pandemic. Many told her they have found greater acceptance now that more people are covering up, she says. Loubna (a pseudonym) from Birmingham, says: “I went to a park the other day, and it felt completely different. (...)” more

Talking about the niqab in the context of the UK's new requirement to wear masks in public spaces

"Anna Piela, a visiting scholar in religious studies and gender at Northwestern University, has noted that Muslim women she interviewed said they find it easier to wear masks because it has softened the stigma of face coverings. 'Suddenly these women - who are often received in the West with open hostility for covering their faces - look a lot more like everyone else,' she wrote in an article in May (...)" more

"As Northwestern University scholar Anna Piela points out in an article for the Conversation, Muslim women are finding themselves looking a lot like everyone else.

'Now, in an unexpected turn of events, people across the West are jogging in face masks and grocery shopping in bandanas tied across their mouths. That’s making public life in the niqab much more pleasant, say Muslim women.' Piela wrote."

The best endorsement a is to be organically cited. Other examples include my work in syllabi of cool courses like

Veiling in the Muslim World (University of Texas);

Women in Scriptures (University of Texas);

Gender and Communication (Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism);

Intro to Gender Studies 125 (Manchester Metropolitan University, IN);

ART4001 Critical Debates: Photography (Middlesex University, UK)