Irina Fedorovna Popova

Irina Fedorovna Popova (; 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.

Popova has been a visiting scholar with the Center for Chinese Studies in Taipei (Taiwan), University of Pennsylvania (USA), Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (Copenhagen, Denmark), and Peking University (China).

Education
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" ("Ti-fan") by T'ang T'ai-tsung 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 T'ang China.

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 a member of a number of editorial boards, including the Head of the Editorial Board of the periodicals Pis'mennye pamiatniki Vostoka, Written Monuments of the Orient, Strany i narody Vostoka (Countries and Peoples of Orient), Tulufan janjiu, Minzu guji yanjiu, Zhongguo lishi gudai wenxian (China), Studia Orientalia Slovaca (University of Bratislava, Slovakia), Shygys-Orient (Kazakhstan); and Deputy Head of the Editorial Board of the academic series Pamiatniki pismennosti Vostoka (Written Monuments in the Oriental Scripts).

Publications
She has written over 200 articles, 5 monographs (3 in cooperation with other researchers) and edited 10 collections of articles.

Awards
 2013 – St Petersburg City Government Prize in science and engineering (Prize in philology named after S. F. Oldenburg)
 2016 – Honorary rank "Yangzi Scholar" 长江学者 by Ministry of Education of China

Popova has been made an Honorary Professor of Lanzhou University (China), Ningxia University (China), Shandong University (China), Minzu University of China (Beijing, China), Shaanxi Normal University (Xi'an, China). She has also been awarded an honorary doctororate by the Institute of History of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

References

External links 
 Irina Popova
 Irina Popova. Searches and findings in Central Asia. Lecture 1, ACADEMIA

Category:1961 births
Category:Living people
Category:Russian historians
Category:Russian orientalists
Category:Russian sinologists