KHK Visiting Research Fellow 2018
Senior Lecturer at the Faculty of Oriental Studies, St Petersburg State University

Irina Katkova graduated from the Oriental Faculty of St Petersburg State University in 1991 with the primary field of oriental history. From 2001 to 2014, Irina Katkova was a researcher at the Institute of Oriental Manuscripts of the Russian Academy of Sciences in St Petersburg. There she did in-depth research on Malay manuscripts focussing on religious aspects of Islam and Sufism in Indonesia and Islamic written heritage from the collection of Sufi brotherhoods of Western Sumatra. This research included field trips to Western Sumatra and Western Java. Besides that, she has been a lecturer for Indonesian, the history of Indonesia and Sufi literature at St Petersburg State University since 2000.

Since 2014, she has been working for the projects Islamic Encyclopedia and Encyclopedia of Mysticism (both published with Brill). Since February 2016, Irina Katkova is a senior fellow at the International Institute of Asian Studies in Leiden. Irina Katkova has also been a visiting fellow at various other institutions, including the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies in Copenhagen, Dutch Institute of Advance Studies, ISAM in Istanbul, the Hague Nationaal Archief and International Institute of Asian Studies in Leiden.

From 2008 to 2014 Irina Katkova worked intensively with the Endangered Archives Programme of the British Library. She first took part in the pilot project “Endangered Manuscripts of Western Sumatra. Collection of Sufi brotherhoods” (2008-2009) and later led the major project “Endangered Manuscripts of Western Sumatra and Jambi Collection of Sufi brotherhoods” (2010-2014). Currently, she is writing a monograph on the data of these two projects and collected manuscripts.

Education

• Ph.D., Department of Asian and African Studies, St.Petersburg State University, 1991

KHK Fellowship

Duration: October - December 2018
Project: Tariqah in Contemporary Muslim World / Naqshbandiayh Sheikhs and Ideas in Western Sumatra