Photo: Miran Hladnik
Prof. Irena Novak Popov, Ph.D. (1952) – studied English and French language and literature at the Faculty of Arts in Ljubljana and, after completing further studies at the University of Essex in the United Kingdom, received her degree in 1977. After graduation, she worked for one year as an assistant in the Etymological and Onomastic Section of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts (SAZU). In 1980, she became a research associate at the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, working on the research project Slovene Poetry of Resistance. In 1991, she earned her master’s degree with a thesis titled Poetic Figures in the Evolution of Oton Župančič’s and Edvard Kocbek’s Poetics in the Depiction of War. In 1995, she earned her Ph.D. with a dissertation on the poetry of Edvard Kocbek. From 1998 to 2000, she served as head of the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at the University of Ljubljana. Since 2004, she has been an associate professor of Slovenian literature. She focuses on contemporary Slovenian poetry, including works by female authors (she edited the Anthology of Slovenian Women Poets I and II, a project she was invited to undertake by editor Goran Potočnik Černe for the Tuma publishing house). In 2004, she chaired the Obdobja international symposium, and in 2006, the SSLK, Seminar of Slovenian Language, Literature, and Culture.
