The FEZANA Religion Education Committee (REC) hosted a webinar titled “The Transformative Influence of Zoroastrian Women in the 21st Century” in memory of Khorshed Jungelwala, featuring a presentation by Dr. Paulina Niechciał.
Held in 2025 to honor Khorshed Jungelwala’s legacy, the session highlighted the evolving and influential roles of Zoroastrian women in shaping modern society.
The webinar took place on Saturday, November 8, 2025, at 9:00 a.m. PST, 11:00 a.m. CST, and 12:00 noon EST via Zoom (Meeting ID: 862 7732 6439, Passcode: REC).
The lecture highlighted the contributions of Zoroastrian women, who, shaped by social and cultural transformations in the modern era, have expanded beyond traditional family roles to occupy influential positions within their communities. Drawing on research conducted among Zoroastrians in the United States, the presentation explored how women actively engage in preserving, interpreting, and advancing Zoroastrian religious traditions both within the household and in public life.
About Dr. Paulina Niechciał
Dr. Paulina Niechciał is an Assistant Professor at the Center for Comparative Civilizations Studies at Jagiellonian University in Kraków, Poland.
She holds a master’s degree in ethnology and Iranian studies and earned her Ph.D. in sociology with a fieldwork-based dissertation in Iran, examining the formation of collective identity among contemporary Zoroastrians in Tehran.
Dr. Niechciał also studied Persian language and literature at the International Center for Persian Studies at the University of Tehran. She has served as a visiting professor at Utica University, Rochester University, and the Tajik Academy of Sciences. She is a recipient of the Polish Minister of Science and Higher Education’s scholarship for outstanding young researchers.
Her research focuses on minorities and identity, anthropology and sociology of religion, and has been enriched by studies on diaspora communities and gender. She specializes in the contemporary cultures of Iran, Afghanistan, and Tajikistan, and has extensive experience in Persian and Dari translation and interpretation. Dr. Niechciał has authored numerous academic articles, book chapters, and the book “The Zoroastrian Minority in Modern Tehran: On Collective Identity under Shia Dominance”, published in Polish in 2013.
She has also participated in academic and community-oriented projects aimed at making university research more accessible to the public. In 2019, with support from a Kosciuszko Foundation Fellowship and hosted by the School of Central Eurasian Studies at Indiana University, she carried out field research through the project “Lived Religion in the Context of Migration: Zoroastrian Women in the United States”, which culminated in her recent book, “Zoroastrian Women in the United States: Living Zoroastrianism in the Diaspora”.
More recently, she was a visiting researcher at the Department of Anthropology at SUNY University at Buffalo, where she conducted research among American women of Polish heritage.
