Aglaia Iankovskaia did her undergraduate studies in Ethnology and Anthropology at St. Petersburg State University and received a Master’s degree in Medieval Studies from the Central European University, Budapest. During her Ph.D. studies in the Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography (Kunstkamera), St. Petersburg, she also completed non-degree programs in Morocco and Indonesia.

In 2016, Aglaia defended a doctoral thesis dealing with the medieval Arabic sources on the Indonesian-Malay world and the conceptions and perceptions of the region they represent. Since 2017, she has been working in the Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography as a junior research fellow. Aglaia’s research interests include cultural connections between the Middle East and maritime Southeast Asia, Indian Ocean history, and the history and cultural anthropology of Sumatra. Within the framework of the project, she plans to look into interlinear translations from Arabic to Malay in the context of the spread and reception of the Middle Eastern Islamicate culture in the Malay-Indonesian region after 1500.