Ion Popa successfully defended his PhD thesis in December 2013 at the University of Manchester, UK, where he also received his M.A. in Religion and Political Life in 2009. Before starting his DRS Postdoctoral Fellowship at Freie Universität in February 2015, Dr. Popa was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Yad Vashem International Institute for Holocaust Research, Jerusalem (October 2014-January 2015), and a part-time lecturer in Holocaust Studies at the University of Manchester (2012-2014). He published articles and book reviews in Yad Vashem Studies (2011), European Review of History (2012), Holocaust. Study and Research (2013) and Holocaust and Genocide Studies (2015) and the book manuscript based on his PhD thesis entitled A History of Denial: The Romanian Orthodox Church and the Holocaust, 1938-Present, will be published in 2016 by Indiana University Press. Dr. Popa presented papers at numerous academic conferences in Washington DC, Jerusalem, Bloomington Indiana, Krakow, Leicester and Manchester, including two lectures for the general public on the topic of Jewish-Christian relations at Imperial War Museum North, UK (October 2014) and at Yad Vashem International Institute for Holocaust Research (November 2014). He has been the recipient of several prestigious awards: Yad Vashem Post-Doctoral Fellowship (2014-2015), the Tziporah Wiesel Fellowship at the Centre for Advanced Holocaust Studies, USHMM, Washington DC (2013), University of Manchester/School of Arts Languages and Cultures Award (2012-2013) and the Saul Kagan Claims Conference Advanced Shoah Studies Fellowship, New York (2010-2012).

Jewish-Christian relations, the Holocaust, church-state and inter-religious relations in Romania and Eastern/South-Eastern Europe.

Monograph:

In Press (expected date 2016): A History of Denial: The Romanian Orthodox Church and the Holocaust, 1938-Present – Indiana University Press

Peer Reviewed Articles:

“Notes on a Communist Trial: the 7th Rosiori Regiment and the Holocaust in Romania and the Soviet Union” – The Journal of Genocide Research. Expected date: 2017

“Reactions of Converted Jews and Their Families to Anti-Semitic Laws, Romania 1940-1942” – The Journal of the Centre for the Study of the History of Jews in Romania. Expected date: 2016

“Sanctuary from the Holocaust? Roman Catholic Conversion of Jews in Romania, Bucharest, 1942” – Holocaust and Genocide Studies, vol. 29, no 1 (Spring 2015), pp. 39-56

 “Visarion Puiu, the Former Romanian Orthodox Metropolitan (Archbishop) of Transnistria – A Historical Study on His Life and Activity Before, During and After the Holocaust (1935-1964)” – Holocaust. Study and Research, vol. 5, no 1 (6) (2013), pp. 182-203

“Miron Cristea, The Romanian Orthodox Patriarch: his political and religious influence in deciding the fate of the Romanian Jews (February 1938-March 1939)” – Yad Vashem Studies, vol. 40, no. 2 (2012), pp. 11-34

Book reviews:

“Uta Gerhardt, Thomas Karlauf, eds., The Night of Broken Glass, Eyewitness Accounts of Kristallnacht, translated by Robert Simmons and Nick Somers, Cambridge: Polity Press, 2012” – European Review of History, vol. 20, issue 2 (Spring, 2013), pp. 332-333

“Panteleymon Anastasakis, The Church of Greece under Axis Occupation, Fordham University Press, New York, 2015” – European Review of History, spring 2016