New SFI Rector — Aleksandr Mikhailovich Kopirovskij

Aleksandr Mikhailovich Kopirovskij has been appointed as the new Rector of St Philaret’s Institute. A Candidate of Pedagogical Sciences, Kopirovskij is Head of the SFI Theology Department. The decision to appoint Kopirovskij was made by SFI’s founding organization, ROO “Sretenie”, after the death of former Rector Aleksej Borisovich Marurov, who occupied the post from 2020.

Aleksandr Kopirovskij is a specialist in church art and architecture and the author of several monographs and more than 350 articles in both scholarly and popular journals. He began teaching at higher school in the 1980’s.

In 1972, Kopirovskij graduated from the Faculty of General Economics of the Plekhanov Moscow Institute of National Economy, and in 1982 he graduated from the Department of History and Art Theory of the Faculty of History at Lomonosov Moscow State University. From 1980 to 1984 he taught his own course on “Church Archelogy” at the Leningrad Spiritual Academy and Seminary. From 1979 until 1990 he worked at the Andrey Rublev Museum of Ancient Russian Culture and Art. Aleksandr Mikhailovich began to teach at St Philaret’s from the moment of its founding, in parallel with his studies at the Institute’s Faculty of Theology, from which he graduated in 1995.

At present, Kopirovskij is teaching courses on “Church Architecture and Visual Arts”, “Christian Aesthetics and the Culture of International Art”, as well as “An Introduction to Theology”, a methodological course entitled “Writing Academic Texts”, and a series of other methodological disciplines.

All the students and graduates of the SFI Theology Faculty know Aleksandr Mikhailovich as their guide in the world of visual art. In 2022 he helped to launch a new continuing education programme at our theological college entitled “Introduction to the Language of Visual Art”, which is aimed at those who would like to learn to understand what paintings, graphic art, architecture, sculpture and iconography are trying to say, and how to interact with them.

Aleksandr Kopirovskij is a member of the Association of Art Critics and a laureate of the Makariev prize, for which he was nominated in the category “Textbook or teaching aid contributing to scholarship in one of the existing categories” for his textbook “Studying and Teaching Church Art” (2019). He is a winner of the Russian National Intercollegiate Competition for Works by Teachers and Students (St Petersburg, 2003 and 2008); and has been awarded the St Tatiana Badge of Honour for being a “Mentor to Young People” (2003).