Irena Dorota Backus (1950 – 13 June 2019) was a professor of the History of the Reformation at the University of Geneva.
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.
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 (Leiden, Brill).
She was obliged to stop work by a stroke in 2014, and died in Geneva on 13 June 2019.