Irena Backus
Irena Dorota Backus (1950 – 13 June 2019) was a professor of the History of the Reformation at the University of Geneva. Life. Born in Poland in 1950, Backus studied at Somerville College, Oxford. She obtained her doctorate in 1976, with a thesis on Theodore Beza's influence on the English New Testament, published in 1980 as "The Reformed Roots of the English New Testament: The Influence of Theodore Beza". From 1982 she was employed at the Institute for Reformation History in Geneva. A Festschrift in her honour was published in 2018, "Crossing Traditions: Essays on the Reformation and  Intellectual History in Honour of Irena Backus", edited by Maria-Cristina Pitassi and Daniela Solfaroli Camillocci with the collaboration of Arthur Huiban (Leiden, Brill). She was obliged to stop work by a stroke in 2014, and died in Geneva on 13 June 2019.