Frits Herman ('Kees') van Naerssen (1904 – 7 June 1974)[1] was a scholar of Javanese epigraphy and an early figure in Asian studies in post-war Australia.
")[3] in old Javanese epigraphy in 1941 under Nicolaas Johannes Krom, a Dutch epigrapher, archaeologist, historiographer and researcher into early Indonesian history and traditional culture.
He worked as adjunct secretary for the Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde (KITLV) (English, "Royal Institute for the Linguistics, Geography and Ethnology"), which was at that time located in The Hague, and as curator of the Javanese collections at the Koloniaal Instituut (English, "Colonial Institute") in Amsterdam in the years 1939-46 before teaching as a lector in sociology at the Agricultural University of Wageningen from 1946 to 1956.
[8] Van Naerrsen belonged to a small pioneering group of scholars working towards the spread of Asian studies in Australia, and the Australian public's growing interest in Asia, in the decades following World War II.
In addition to his university endeavours, he was first chairman of a committee responsible for assembling book lists for the study of Indonesian in secondary schools in New South Wales.