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Anna Piela

Anna Piela

Anna Piela is a visiting scholar at the department of religious studies at Northwestern University. She has a Ph.D. in Women’s Studies from the University of York (U.K.). Her research interests are primarily Islam and gender. She is currently a primary investigator on an American Academy of Religion-funded project on racial identity performances of white female Polish converts to Islam. Last year her book, Wearing the Niqab: Muslim Women in the UK and the US, was published by Bloomsbury Academic. Follow her work at her website and on Twitter @annapiela999.

Turkish women waiting outside a mosque for friends before going in to pray, 1920

Mosques of Their Own

The long, little-known history of Muslim women in communal religious life.
A woman wearing a head scarf

Muslim Women and the Politics of the Headscarf

For many women, wearing the hijab was—and is—an element of piety, but it's been coopted into a political symbol.