I first met Gananath at the Annual Conference of the Association for Asian Studies in Washington DC in March 1984, several weeks after I had returned to the United States after completing my PhD at SOAS…

A survey conducted by the Social Scientists’ Association (SSA), Colombo, captured public experiences and perceptions following the impact of Cyclone Ditwah in Sri Lanka. The objective of the study was to examine citizens’ perceptions of institutional responsiveness following Cyclone Ditwah…

Dr Elizabeth Harris (Birmingham University) led a review and reflection on the contemporary relevance of her 2018 book, ‘Religion, Space and Conflict in Sri Lanka: Colonial and Postcolonial Contexts’, at the SSA in Colombo on 28 January 2026. Harris focused on the post-war project of Sinhala Buddhicisation of archaeological and other sites in the north and east, contextualising it in the western Christian missionary exclusivism of the 19th century in relation to Buddhism. Drawing on archival research and interviews, Harris raised questions on the connections between human imaginaries of the Self and the Other, in their influence on multi-religious, multi-ethnic, and sometimes syncretic, spatial landscapes Sri Lanka