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. She was obliged to stop work by a stroke in 2014, and died in Geneva on 13 June 2019.
Works
Report on the De Halpert and Corbett family papers, 1867-1936, listed by Irena Backus
Logique et Theologie au XVIe Siecle
The Reformed Roots of the English New Testament: The Influence of Theodore Beza
Martin Borrhaus
Martini Buceri opera omnia. Series 2 Opera latina. Vol.2 Enarratio in Evangelion Johannis, edidit Irena Backus
Théorie et pratique de l'exégèse: actes du troisième colloque international sur l'histoire de l'exégèse biblique au 16e siècle , edited by Irena Backus and Francis Higman
Lectures humanistes de Basile de Césarée: traductions latines
The Disputations of Baden, 1526 and Berne, 1528: Neutralizing the Early Church
Le miracle de Laon: le déraisonnable, le raisonnable, l'apocalyptique et le politique dans les récits du Miracle de Laon, 1566-1578
The Reception of the Church Fathers in the West: From the Carolingians to the Maurists, edited by Irena Backus
Les sept visions et la fin des temps: les commentaires genevois de l'Apocalypse entre 1539 et 1584
Reformation Readings of the Apocalypse: Geneva, Zurich and Wittenberg
Jean Calvin, Traité des reliques, edited by Irena Backus
Historical Method and Confessional Identity in the Era of the Reformation, 1378-1615
Life Writing in Reformation Europe: Lives of Reformers by Friends, Disciples and Foes
Calvin and his influence, 1509-2009, edited by Irena Backus and Philip Benedict
L'argument hérésiologique : l'Église ancienne et les Réformes, XVIe-XVIIe siècles : actes du colloque de Tours, 10-11 septembre 2010, edited by Irena Backus, Philippe Büttgen and Bernard Pouderon
"'Semipelagianism': The Origins of the Term and its Passage into the History of Heresy", Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 65:1, pp. 25-46
