The Serbian Institute is an institution founded in Budapest in 2009 by the Self-Government of Serbs in Hungary (SSM). The SSM has the legal status of a national minority self-government and represents the interests of the Serbian community in Hungary at the state level, i.e. it achieves the cultural autonomy of Serbs in Hungary by establishing and maintaining various cultural, educational and other institutions, such as information institutions.
In 2019, in accordance with the decision of the SSM assembly, the Institute was transformed from a budgetary institution into a non-profit limited liability company and has maintained such status to this day.
The task of the institute is to conduct, organize, assist, coordinate and support scientific research on the past and present social reality of Serbs in Hungary.
The beginnings of the scientific life of Serbs in Hungary date back several centuries. Starting from the 18th century, numerous Serbian historians, linguists, lawyers, philosophers, doctors, naturalists, biologists, physicists and engineers were born, studied, lived and worked in Hungary/Hungary. The Matica Srpska, founded in 1826 in Pest, was the first Serbian institution to provide institutional support to the scientific activities of Serbs.
The goal of the institute is to, relying on a rich historical heritage, create institutional frameworks for the scientific self-knowledge of the already small number of Serbs in Hungary, who despite this still have a nationally conscious and educated intelligentsia.
We want to expand our activities to include the popularization of science and professional support for minority education, higher education, the protection of Serbian cultural monuments in Hungary, and political decision-making in the Serbian community.
We are aware that only in cooperation with other scientific institutions can we realize our goals. And that is why we are open to cooperation both in Hungary and in the homeland, as well as internationally. Over the past years, we have established professional cooperation with the Serbian Church Museum in Szentendre, the Museum of Vojvodina, the Ethnographic, Musicological and Balkanological Institute, as well as with the Institute of the Serbian Language of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts, the Committee for the Study of National Minorities and Human Rights of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts, the Institute of Social Sciences in Belgrade, the Faculty of Philosophy in Novi Sad, Matica Srpska and the Research Center for Linguistics and the Institute of Musicology in Budapest.
As a relatively new institution of a small minority community, we have to face various difficulties, among which we should highlight the lack of capacity, primarily the necessary material resources for the work of the Institute. However, the projects we have implemented give us hope and give perspective to our work.
We would like you to be able to stay informed about the work of the Institute with the help of this website, which is being gradually built and constantly updated.
Pera Lastić, director
Born in Budapest, 1960. Graduated from the Serbo-Croatian Gymnasium (SHG) in Budapest (1979). Graduated in physics from Eötvös Loránd University (1985). Between 1985 and 1990, he worked at the Department of Experimental Physics at the University of Technical Sciences in Budapest, in the laser group with Ferenc Kraus. Since 1989, he has been involved in minority politics and culture. From 1990 to 1998, he was vice president and then acting president of the Serbian Democratic Alliance. From 1991 to 1995, he was secretary and then acting president of the Round Table of National and Ethnic Minorities in Hungary. From 1995 to 2003, he was the first president of the Self-Government of Serbs in Hungary (for two terms). He is the initiator of the main national institutions and manifestations of Serbs in Hungary, and was also a member of various expert advisory bodies to the bodies of the Hungarian government in the field of minority policy. Since 2009, he has been the director of the Serbian Institute in Budapest, which was founded that year by the Self-Government of Serbs in Hungary (SSM). In 2019, in accordance with the decision of the SSM assembly, the Institute was transformed from a budgetary institution into a non-profit limited liability company and has maintained such status to this day. Since then, Pera Lastić has served as the director of the Serbian Institute non-profit limited liability company In 1995, he received the "Minority Award" (Kisebbségekért Díjat) from the Government of Hungary, and in 2004, the "Vuk Karadžić" Cultural Award from the Government of the State Union of Serbia and Montenegro. He is a member of the Committee for Research on National Minorities and Human Rights of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts (SANU). He is an associate member of Matica Srpska. From 2008 to 2020, he was a part-time professor of physics at the Serbian Gymnasium "Nikola Tesla" in Budapest. He is the author of professional and popular science articles, books, exhibitions, projects, and the editor of a large number of books in the field of minority rights, the position of minorities, culture and history of Serbs in Hungary. In addition to Serbian and Hungarian, he also speaks English and Russian.
Born in Novi Sad in 1961. He earned a degree in history from the Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Novi Sad in 1987. From 1987 to 1990, he worked as a teacher, or rather a professor of history, in primary schools in Novi Bečej and Novi Sad, and in the Karlovac Gymnasium. From 1990 to the end of 1992, he worked as a journalist in the Hungarian editorial office of Radio Novi Sad. Since 1993, he has lived and worked in the capital of Hungary. From 1993 to 2006, he worked at the National Library for Foreign Languages in Budapest, as a librarian and reference for the Serbian, Croatian and Slovenian national minorities. In the meantime, he earned a degree in librarianship from the Faculty of Philosophy of the Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest. From 2006 to 2008, he was the head of the archive of a drug monitoring company, and then from 2008 to the beginning of 2011, he worked in the library of the Ludwig Museum of Contemporary Art in Budapest, as a librarian. Since February 2011, he has been employed at the Serbian Institute in Budapest, where he currently works as a historian and associate on research projects. He has been an assistant editor in the preparation of six books and many bilingual roll-up exhibitions. He actively participates in those events of the Serbian community in Hungary, where the Serbian Institute is present as the main organizer or co-organizer. He writes scientific texts in the field of historical science and librarianship, which he has presented in periodicals (journals and proceedings of scientific conferences) in Budapest and Tatabánya, or in Sarajevo, Zagreb, Belgrade, Novi Sad, Subotica, Vranje and Timisoara. So far, he has published nearly forty publications in Serbian and Hungarian. In addition to Hungarian and Serbian, he also speaks English, German and Slovenian.
Sofia Biro-Kaplan (Budapest, 1994) is a researcher-intern at the Serbian Institute in Budapest. She completed her undergraduate and master's studies at the Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest. In 2015, she earned a degree in ethnography from the Faculty of Philosophy, while she defended her master's thesis on the topic: "The Attitude of Serbian Youth from Lovre to Tradition (Issues of Identification through the Examination of the Preservation of Tradition)" in 2018 at the Department of Cultural Anthropology at the Faculty of Social Sciences. Between 2019 and 2020, she attended specific postgraduate studies at the Edutus University, where she earned a degree in cultural management. From 2015 to 2017, she was employed at the Fairy Tale Museum, a member institution of the Petőfi Literary Museum in Budapest. She gained research experience during her studies in various scientific projects at the University, then as an associate of the Serbian Institute, where she has been employed since 2017. She is currently engaged in the following projects: Image and Memory, research into the linguistic landscape of Serbs in Hungary, creation and maintenance of a multimedia online contribution to the Vujicic Collection, and processing the legacy of Marija Kiš. In addition, she participates in various publishing, editorial and organizational tasks at the Institute. She deals with folk religion, cultural history and folklore of Serbs in Hungary. She has participated in several scientific meetings and conferences in the country and abroad. She is the author of several scientific papers and reviews published in Hungarian and Serbian. Since 2022, she has been employed as a lecturer in ethnography and cultural anthropology in the International Scholarship Program "Balint Balássy" and "Aron Marton" at the Hungarian Diplomatic Academy D.O.O. - Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade of Hungary. She speaks English, Italian and Serbian.
Born in 1990 in Sombor, Dušan J. Ljuboja holds a doctorate in historical sciences from the Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest, where he defended his dissertation on Pest and Buda as Serbian cultural centers in the first half of the 19th century (Pest-Buda as
Serbian Cultural Centre in the First Half of the XIXth Century, 2025). He earned his master's degree in historical sciences from the University of Belgrade (2014) and in social development within the international TEMA program (2017), from the Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest and the Charles University in Prague. His research focus includes topics from the cultural history of the 19th century, both Serbian and wider regional. He gained research experience as an associate at the CEFRES Institute in Prague, as well as a researcher at the Matej Bel University in Banská Bystrica (2021/2022). As a guest lecturer, he gave lectures in Slovakia and participated in scientific meetings throughout Central Europe. He has been an associate of the Serbian Institute in Budapest on research, publishing and organizational projects since 2022. In addition to Serbian, he also uses English as a working language.
Born in 1997 in Kragujevac, he completed his secondary education at the Serbian Gymnasium "Nikola Tesla" in Budapest, which he attended from 2012 to 2016. He graduated from the Department of History of the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Novi Sad. He successfully completed his master's degree in the module "Cultural and Historical Heritage" in 2023 with the defense of his thesis on the topic "Material Cultural Heritage of Serbs in Budapest and its Surroundings". Since September 2022, he has been employed as a professor of history and ethnography at the Serbian Educational Center "Nikola Tesla" in Budapest. In addition to teaching, he is actively involved in projects related to the cultivation of the cultural and historical memory of the Serbian community in Hungary. In September 2023, he participated in the launch of the project to organize and mark the Serbian cemetery in Srpski Kovin. As a result of the work, a scientific research article was created, for which he was awarded as a co-author by the Serbian Institute in Budapest and the Self-Government of Serbs in Hungary. Since October 2024, he has been engaged as an external associate of the Serbian Institute in Budapest on the project "Maksim Ludajić (1818–1897) and the Serbian community of his time in Srpski Kovin".
