Irena Dorota Backus received the D.Phil. from Oxford University and wrote her Habilitationschrift at the University of Bern, Switzerland. She is "professeur ordinaire" at the Institut d'histoire de la Reformation at the Univesity of Geneva, Switzerland. Among her many publications are 'The Reception of the Church Fathers in the West', 'Reformation Readings of the Apocalypse', and 'Historical Method and Confessional Identity in the Era of the Reformation', 1378-1615.