site.btaSergei Ignatov: Caretaker Education and Science Minister

Prof. Sergei Ignatov has been proposed as caretaker Minister of Education and Science in the draft cabinet of Andrey Gyurov. Ignatov was born on August 6, 1960 in the city of Vidin, according to information from the Vidin Almanac.

Ignatov completed his primary education at the St. Cyril and St. Methodius Primary School in his hometown and his secondary education in 1978 at the 35th High School with Russian-language instruction M. I. Kalinin in Sofia (today the 35th Secondary Language School Dobri Voynikov).

He was admitted as a student to the St. Cyril and St. Methodius University of Veliko Tarnovo with a major in History, but won a competition to study in the USSR. In 1985, he graduated from Leningrad State University, Faculty of Oriental Studies, specializing in Egyptology. He defended his doctoral dissertation at the same university. He later specialized at All Souls College, Oxford, in 1993 and again in 1995.

In June 2009, Ignatov became Doctor of Historical Sciences, and in 2010 he was appointed professor at New Bulgarian University.

Prof. Ignatov is the founder and director of the Bulgarian Institute of Egyptology at New Bulgarian University, a position he has held since 2006.

In 2006, he was among the nominees for presidential candidate of the united right-wing political parties in Bulgaria.