#  WSRP Announces 2026–27 Research Associates 

 





The Women’s Studies in Religion Program at Harvard Divinity School is pleased to announce the appointment of the 2026-27 research associates and visiting faculty.



 

August 04, 2026

 

 

Five new research associates and visiting faculty will join returning scholar S. Zahra Moballegh at the HDS Women’s Studies in Religion Program and will work on book-length projects during the 2026–27 academic year.

By bringing together scholars from different disciplines and research areas, commonalities in religion and gender emerge.

While working on their projects, the WSRP research associates teach a one-semester course and deliver a lecture on their research.

The 2026-27 research associates are: Jennifer Barry, Fungai Chirongoma, MK Long, Anna Elena Torres, Paola Uparela, and S. Zahra Moballegh. Read more about their backgrounds and their research projects at the WSRP below.



 

 

 

University of Mary Washington

### Jennifer Barry 

 

Visiting Assistant Professor of Women's Studies and Early Christianity

Colorado Scholar

**Project title:** **Red Shoes: Marian Iconography, Material Culture, and the Choranic Imagination in Late Antiquity**

In mosaics from late antique and Byzantine churches, the Virgin Mary is sometimes depicted wearing vivid red shoes. This project examines how this small detail signals the transformation of an ordinary body into a sacred presence. By following her shoes across different sites, the book shows how material objects and visual choices helped define what it meant to see the Virgin.



 [ Jennifer Barry Bio arrow\_circle\_right ](https://wsrp.hds.harvard.edu/people/jennifer-barry) 

 



      ![Jennifer Barry headshot](/sites/g/files/omnuum4861/files/styles/hwp_1_1__480x480/public/2026-07/JBarry_wsrpra.jpg?itok=0kG_Z1Xm) 

 

 

  

 



Stellenbosch University

### Fungai Chirongoma 

 

Visiting Professor of Women’s Studies and African Religions

**Project title:** **Religion as a Resource for Healing for ‘Women of Faith’ Survivors of Gender-Based Violence in South Africa**

The project will examine how women of faith in faith-based shelters for abused women utilize religious rituals, and beliefs to recover from trauma and rebuild their sense of identity. The project highlights the centrality of religion in their recovery journeys.



 [ Fungai Chirongoma Bio arrow\_circle\_right ](https://wsrp.hds.harvard.edu/people/fungai-chirongoma) 

 



      ![Fungai Chirongoma headshot](/sites/g/files/omnuum4861/files/styles/hwp_1_1__480x480/public/2026-07/s200_fungai.chirongoma_wsrpra.jpg?itok=Fu5iwmNy) 

 

 

  

 



Dartmouth College

### MK Long 

 

Visiting Lecturer on Women’s Studies and South Asian Religions

**Project title:** **Between Buddhas: Scenes of Belonging in Burmese Biography**

Buddhist women in Myanmar are typically excluded from the terms and spaces of religious authority. By offering the first English translations of their biographical writings in Burmese, Long shows how Buddhist laywomen and nuns have overcome challenges of recognition by building their own institutional spaces and voicing authority and belonging in their own terms.



 [ MK Long Bio arrow\_circle\_right ](https://wsrp.hds.harvard.edu/people/mk-long) 

 



      ![MK Long headshot](/sites/g/files/omnuum4861/files/styles/hwp_1_1__480x480/public/2026-07/MKLong1_wsrpra%20square%20resize.jpg?itok=nb3xE1T4) 

 

 

  

 



University of Chicago

### Anna Elena Torres 

 

Visiting Associate Professor of Women’s Studies and Jewish Studies

**Project title:** **A Bear Flew By: Animality in Jewish Arts and Literature**

This book-length project advances new readings of ecology, gender, and kinship in Ashkenazi culture.



 [ Anna Torres Bio arrow\_circle\_right ](https://wsrp.hds.harvard.edu/people/anna-torres) 

 



      ![Anna Elena Torres headshot](/sites/g/files/omnuum4861/files/styles/hwp_1_1__480x480/public/2026-07/ATorres_wsrpra.jpeg?itok=faaOByX1) 

 

 

  

 



University of Florida

### Paola Uparela 

 

Visiting Associate Professor of Women’s Studies and Christianity

**Project title:** **Souls and Wombs: Women’s Labor, Miraculous Reproduction, and Colonial Biopolitics in the Transatlantic Evangelization Project**

This project examines several books and manuscripts by Dominican Friar Bartolomé de las Casas (Seville c.1484 –1566) about women’s working conditions, sexual violence, menstruation and humors, pregnancy nutrition, labor pains and remedies to relieve them, and the risks of procreating at an early age, among other topics regarding Indigenous women’s labor rights.



 [ Paola Uparela Bio arrow\_circle\_right ](https://wsrp.hds.harvard.edu/people/paola-uparela) 

 



      ![Paola Uparela headshot](/sites/g/files/omnuum4861/files/styles/hwp_1_1__480x480/public/2026-07/Uparela_wsrpra%20resize.png?itok=fMPylmB7) 

 

 

  

 



Institute for Humanities and Cultural Studies, Tehran

### S. Zahra Moballegh 

 

Visiting Assistant Professor of Women’s Studies and Islam

**Project title:** **Islamic Narrative Theology: Voice, Gender, and Authority in the Qur’an**

Offering a narrative approach to Islamic theology and law, this project examines the role of storytelling through a collective narrator in the Qur’an. Analyzing systematic silences and the narrative voice in Qur’anic stories of women, it explores these narratives as dynamic, aesthetic-political events challenging conceptions of the Qur’an’s authorial voice as a unitary male authority.



 [ Zahra Moballegh Bio arrow\_circle\_right ](https://wsrp.hds.harvard.edu/people/s-zahra-moballegh) 

 



      ![Zahra Moballegh](/sites/g/files/omnuum4861/files/styles/hwp_1_1__480x480/public/2025-06/Moballegh2%20WSRP.jpg?itok=zHHiTjVM) 

 

 

  

 



 

 

 

 



 

 See also:- [ Faculty News and Research ](/news-category/faculty-news-and-research)
- [ WSRP ](/topic-tags/wsrp)