Dr. 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 Saul Kagan Claims Conference Postdoctoral Fellowship, Dr. Popa was a DRS Postdoctoral Fellow at Freie Universität, Berlin (2015-2016) and a part-time lecturer in Holocaust Studies at the University of Manchester (2012-2014).
He published articles and book reviews in Holocaust and Genocide Studies (2015), Holocaust. Study and Research (2013), European Review of History (2013, 2016), and Yad Vashem Studies (2012), 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, Southampton, 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 Doctoral Fellowship, New York (2010-2012).