Nusantara Society


The Nusantara Society is a Russian non-profit learned society for research fellows, professors, lecturers, students and postgraduates of Moscow and St. Petersburg academic institutions, universities and higher schools, studying the vast region of Nusantara, populated by peoples speaking Austronesian languages. Nusantara includes Brunei Darussalam, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Timor Leste, Madagascar, Oceania, as well as countries where Austronesian minorities are present, such as Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam and Taiwan.

Short history

The Society was founded on January 10, 1990 on the basis of the Malay-Indonesian Readings. Later, in June 1998, the Nusantara Research Center was established at the Institute of Asian and African Countries at Moscow State University. The founder and the President of the Society till 2004 was Dr. B.B. Parnickel.

The main aims

The main aims of the Nusantara Society are as follows:

Cooperation with other institutions

The Nusantara Society cooperates closely with the Gorky Institute of World Literature under the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Margarita Rudomino All-Russia State Library for Foreign Literature and the Russian State Library, the Faculty of Oriental Studies at Saint Petersburg State University; Leiden University and the Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies in the Netherlands, the University of Malaya, the Malaysian Institute of Language and Literature and other institutions abroad. A memorandum of understanding was signed with the Malaysian Institute of Language and Literature in 1995.
In December 2017, Nusantara Society celebrated 50th anniversary of the Malay-Indonesian Readings which became the basis for the Nusantara Society. April 4, 2018, the 20th issue of the collection Malay-Indonesian studies was launched at the jubilee meeting of the society.
The Nusantara Society is also engaged in publishing. Its publications include the Malay-Indonesian Studies Series and miscellaneous studies on Nusantara culture. Up until 2019 there were 21 issues of Malay-Indonesian Studies.

Board (2017)

Honorary members of the Society are Malaysian Poets Datuk Dr. Kemala and Dr. Siti Zainon Ismail.