Prof. Svetlina Nikolova was born on January 1, 1942 in Vratsa. She graduated in Bulgarian philology from Sofia University (1964), where she won a competition for post-graduate studies in Old Bulgarian literature (1965–1967) and defended her dissertation on the subject of „Патеричните разкази в старата българска литература“ [Paterik Stories in Old Bulgarian Literature] and began her career at the Cyrillo-Methodian Commission (transformed into the Cyrillo-Methodian Research Centre at the Presidium of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences in 1980). She was appointed director of the Centre in 1994.