Irina Fedorovna Popova
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Irina Fedorovna Popova (Russian: Ирина Фёдоровна Попова; born September 28, 1961) is a Russian sinologist and historian. Since April 2003 she has been the Director of the Institute of Oriental Manuscripts of the Russian Academy of Sciences (IOM RAS) at Saint Petersburg, Russia. She is also Head of the Department of Manuscripts and Documents of the IOM RAS, and Full Professor at St Petersburg State University.[1]
Popova has been a visiting scholar with the Center for Chinese Studies in Taipei (Taiwan), University of Pennsylvania (US), Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (Copenhagen, Denmark), and Peking University (China).
Popova graduated in 1983 from the St Petersburg State University (Faculty of Asian and African Studies, Department of the History of Far East), and completed her Ph.D. in 1989 at the Russian Academy of Sciences. She holds a Doctor of Sciences degree in history (2000) from the Russian Academy of Sciences. The subject of her Ph.D. thesis (in Russian) is "Rules for Emperors" ("Difan") by Tang Taizong as a source on the Chinese Political Thought of the 7th century, and the subject of her Doctoral thesis (in Russian) is The Theory of the State Rulership in the Early Tang China.[1]
Honorary Professor of several universities in China: Lanzhou, Ningxia, Shandong, Peoples’ University of China (Beijing), Shaanxi Normal University (Xi’an), Honorary Doctor of the Institute of History of the Academy of Sciences of China. Member of the Council on Science and Education under the President of the Russian Federation (since 2020).
Research
Basing primarily on the documents of the Tang dynasty, Popova has contributed to the study of imperial rulership in medieval China and the study of the influence of the political practice and imperial ideology in pre-modern China. She has introduced into the academic use the original documents from Dunhuang and Turfan, Chinese epigraphic texts, visual sources on the history of Qing dynasty, archival material on the history of Russian expeditions in Central Asia and history of the Oriental studies.
Popova is an author of more than 200 academic works [6], including 9 monographs (5 of them are collective); editor of 19 collected works; Editor-in-chief of academic journals: “Pis'mennye pamiatniki Vostoka” (“Written Monuments of the Orient” in Russian), “Strany i Narody Vostoka” (“Countries and Peoples of the Orient”), “Written Monuments of the Orient” (English version); Deputy Chair of the editorial board of the academic series “Pamiatniki pismennosti Vostoka” (“Written Monuments in the Oriental Scripts”). Member of the editorial boards of Russian and foreign academic periodicals, including “Turfan Studies” (“Tulufan Yanjiu”, in China), “Study of the Documents in the Chinese Minorities Scripts” (“Minzu guji Yanjiu”, China), “Studia Orientalia Slovaca” (University of Bratislava), etc.
Awards
- 2013 – S. F. Oldenburg Prize of the Government of St. Petersburg and the St. Petersburg Scientific Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences for outstanding results in the field of the study of written heritage of China and Central Asia.
- 2016 – Honorary rank "Yangzi Scholar" 长江 学者 [8] of the Ministry of Education of the PRC for achievements in the study of ancient and medieval history of China.
- 2017 - Medal "Friendship" of the Government of Mongolia.
- 2018 - Medal of the Order for Merit to the Republic of Tatarstan.
