Books

To Make a Village Soviet: Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Transformation of a Postwar Ukrainian Borderland (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2022)

Dissent on the Margins: How Soviet Jehovah's Witnesses Defied Communism and Lived to Preach About It (Oxford University Press, 2014) 

Articles

“Billy Graham in the Land of the Soviets: American Evangelicals and their Cold War Mission,” Journal of Cold War Studies (forthcoming).  

Life Under Ban: Jehovah's Witnesses in Russia Since 2017,” Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe 41, no. 2 (2021): 34-50.

“From Sectarians to Extremists: The Language of Marginalization in Soviet and Post-Soviet Society,” The Soviet and Post-Soviet Review 46, no. 2 (2019): 105-27.  

Co-authored with Zoe Knox, “The 2002 Russian Anti-Extremism Law: An Introduction,” The Soviet and Post-Soviet Review 46, no. 2 (2019): 97-104.  

“It Takes a Village: Collectivization in the Postwar Ukrainian Borderlands,” Canadian Slavonic Papers 60, nos. 3-4 (2018): 529-47.  

'"I Saw the Light:' Former Believer Testimonials in the Soviet Union, 1957-1987." Cahiers du Monde russe 52, no. 1 (2011): 163-84.

"Jehovah's Witnesses and Post-Soviet Religious Policy in Moldova and the Transnistrian Moldovan Republic." Journal of Church and State 53, no. 3 (2011): 421-41.

“Contested Victims: Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Russian Orthodox Church, 1990 to 2004,” Religion, State and Society 35, no. 3 (2007): 261-78.  

“Negotiating the Limits of Religious Pluralism in Post-Soviet Russia: The Anticult Movement in the Russian Orthodox Church, 1990-2004,” Russian Review 65, no. 4 (2006): 637-56.

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“Migrants to, from, and within the Soviet Union at the Cold War’s End” Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. Chicago, IL. November 2022.  

“Leaving Babylon? Soviet Evangelicals Abroad in the Late Cold War.” Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. Washington, DC. November 2021.  

“‘You Make Us into Fanatics, But We are Servants of God:’” International Council for Central and East European Studies: 10th World Congress. Montreal, CA (virtual). August 2021.  

“Christian Human Rights Activism in the Late Cold War,” Reinventing Religion: The Rise of Religious Sensibility in the Late Soviet Union. Basel, Switzerland (virtual). June 2021.  

“Assessing the Russian Anti-Extremism Law's Impact on Jehovah's Witnesses.” Southern Conference on Slavic Studies. Greenville, SC. March 2021. 

“Knocking on the USSR’s Door: Jehovah’s Witnesses, Religious Dissent, and the Cold War.” AfterWars Faculty Research Seminar. University of Tennessee-Knoxville. December 2019. 

“To Serve God or Mammon: Internal Emigration as an Alternative to Emigration Abroad in the Late Cold War.” Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. San Francisco, CA. November 2019.  

“Won’t Somebody Please Think Of the Children?” Secularization and Schools in Postwar Transcarpathia.” Southern Conference on Slavic Studies. Mobile, AL. March 2019.  

“How Jehovah’s Witnesses Became 'Extremists': The Strange State of Religious Freedom in Russia.” University of Wisconsin-Madison. October 2018.

“Archival Explorations from the Keston Center for Religion, Politics, and Society.” Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. Washington, DC. November 2017.  

“Out of Babylon: Pentecostal Emigration Demands and Religious Identity in the Late Soviet Union.” A Century of Movement: Russian Culture and Global Community since 1917. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. October 2017.  

“Tactics of Pentecostal Dissent in the Late Soviet Period.” Southern Conference on Slavic Studies. Alexandria, VA. April 2017.

“The Postwar Gulag as a Site of Evangelism.” Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. Washington, DC. November 2016.  

“Secular Schools and Witness Children in Soviet Ukraine,” International Conference of European Observatory of Religion and Secularism: The Jehovah’s Witnesses in Scholarly Perspective. Antwerp, Belgium. April 2016.  

“Human Rights, Soviet Believers, and Billy Graham: America’s Pastor in Moscow.” Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. Boston, Massachusetts. November 2015.  

“The Basement Crusade: Billy Graham and the Siberian Seven Incident.” Protestantism and the Superpowers: Mission, Spirituality, and Prayer in the USA and USSR. University of Leicester, UK. September 2014.  

“Forging an Atheist State in Postwar Ukraine: A Case Study of Jehovah’s Witnesses in the Village of Bila Tserkva.” Biennial Conference on the History of Religion. Boston College, Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts. March 2014.  

“This Land is Your Land: The Embassy as a Site of Asylum.” Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. Boston, Massachusetts. November 2013.  

“It’s the End of the World as We Know It: Soviet Jehovah's Witnesses and the Armageddon Scare of 1975.” Southern Conference on Slavic Studies. Greensboro, North Carolina. March 2013.

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NEH Summer Stipend, National Endowment for the Humanities, 2017.

Keston Institute Scholarship, Keston Center for Religion, Politics, & Society, 2016.

Best First Book, Southern Conference on Slavic Studies, 2015.

Newcombe Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship, Woodrow Wilson Foundation, 2010-2011.

Title VIII Fellowship for Romanian language study, ACIE and the U.S. Department of State, 2010.

Helen Darcovich Memorial Doctoral Fellowship, University of Alberta, 2010.

International Dissertation Research Fellowship, SSRC-ACLS, 2008-2009.

Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Fellowship, U.S. Department of Education, 2008-2009.

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Dr. Baran continues to work on religious freedom issues surrounding Jehovah's Witnesses, particularly in Russia and Ukraine. She is currently working on a co-edited volume with Bloomsbury Academic Press, entitled Essays on Minority Religions and Religious Tolerance: The Jehovah’s Witness Test.

In addition, her latest research explores the transnational movement on behalf of Soviet Pentecostal emigration rights in the late Cold War. In particular, it focuses on the Siberian Seven incident, in which two Pentecostal families sought asylum by living in the American Embassy in Moscow for nearly five years.

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“Remarks on Operation North.” 70 Years After Operation North: Important Lessons of Repression for Faith.” Ukrainian Association of Religious Studies Scholars, Center for Studies on New Religions, and Center of Jehovah's Witnesses in Ukraine. Ukraine (virtual). April 2021.

“Jehovah's Witnesses in Russia,” World Religions and Spirituality Project (WRSP), https://wrldrels.org/2020/11/12/jehovahs-witnesses-russia/, November 2020.  

“Jehovah’s Witnesses Banned in Russia,” East-West Church & Ministry Report 25, no. 3 (2017): 1-3.

“Jehovah’s Witnesses Ban Spells End for Russia’s Religious Diversity, The Moscow Times, April 24, 2017, https://themoscowtimes.com/articles/jehovahs-witnesses-ban-spells-end-of-russias-religious-diversity-op-ed-57793.  

“Why Banning the Jehovah’s Witnesses Won’t Work for Russia,” OUP Blog, April 20, 2017, https://blog.oup.com/2017/04/banning-jehovahs-witnesses-russia/.  

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