Ioan-Aurel Pop is professor and Rector of Babeș-Bolyai University in Cluj-Napoca, the author and co-author of over fifty books, treatises and textbooks and of over three hundred articles and studies, Doctor Honoris Causa of universities in Alba Iulia, Timişoara, Oradea, Cahul, Galați, Sibiu, Târgu Mureș, the State University of Chișinău, ”Ion Creangă” Pedagogical University of Chișinău. He is a member of the Romanian Academy, of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts in Salzburg, of the National Virgilian Academy of Sciences, Letters and Arts in Mantua (Italy) and a member of the European Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters in Paris. He has been Director of the Romanian Cultural Institute in New York (USA) and the Romanian Institute for Culture and Humanistic Research in Venice (Italy) and he is Director of the Centre for Transylvanian Studies of the Romanian Academy.