SSA is one of the regional institutional partners of the Central European University Democracy Institute (CEU DI) Forum entitled “Democracy and Development” of the Central European University, Hungary. The other regional partners are based in Cape Town, Budapest, and Bogota. The Forum, a 3-year project aims to move away from outdated views of democracy developed in- and for- a Euro-American context and create a cross-regional dialogue on democracy in its political, social, and economic dimensions. Through its regional hubs, the Forum has established a unique platform for creative and critical collaboration between scholars from the Global South and the Global North, in order to confront a series of conceptual and policy-relevant challenges that are associated with reviving and reclaiming democracy and understanding the synergies between democracy and development. The project combines multidisciplinary and cross-regional research production on democracy and development, with a set of educational, training, and outreach activities and outputs that will build on the original research produced during the project.

In terms of the collaboration between SSA and CEU DI, SSA will host 08 scholars, i.e. 02 senior fellows and 06 post-doctoral fellows in Colombo for a period of 08 months beginning from October 2024-May 2025. The academic convener of the project, whose responsibility it is to ensure the delivery of research projects such as academic papers and book projects by the fellowship recipients, will begin his tenure in Colombo in August 2024. The fellows will engage in individual research projects related to the broad theme of democracy and development, which will be published in peer-reviewed international journals at the end of the project. They will also engage with academics from universities and research institutes in Sri Lanka during their residency, to collaborate on various research endeavours. This knowledge exchange is expected to benefit local academics as well as the fellows in developing their, research, innovative teaching methods, and creating sustainable academic collaborations.

SSA currently coordinates a research project with the Department of Political Geography, University of Zurich to study politics of patronage and discourses of patronage as part of a larger international academic collaboration entitled ‘Reversing the Gaze: Decolonizing Political Theory’. In addition to the facilitation of the research study, SSA will also coordinate a number of seminars on the outcome of the project. As the second phase of this project, SSA and the Department of Geography, University of Zurich intend to conduct an international workshop on Sri Lankan Studies in the year 2025.

Reversing the gaze is a key strategy by which the project decentres the global north as the historically assumed epicentre of democracy and good/ democratic governance, to centre the global south and what we may learn from how democracy is imagined and practiced in societies of the global south for a revitalized theory of democracy in general. Sri Lanka provides a key site of analysis given its long and complex relationship with democracy. It focuses on how patronage politics sits together with, rather than in opposition to, democratic ideals in Sri Lankan society. In doing so, they offer a critique of dominant theoretical narratives on liberal democracy, and offer evidence on how Western liberal democracy embraced, rather than rejected, social and cultural practices already on the ground. They thereby complicate the assumed teleology of pre-modern to modern for an understanding of the hybridity, exchange and co-constitution that took place between the local and democracy when it was first introduced to the country. The case studies aim, therefore, at going beyond the binary which situates patronage as oppositional to democracy for an understanding of how they work together, performatively relying upon, and reinforcing each other.

This project aimed to build knowledge and advance dialogue around issues of democracy, peace building, and reconciliation among high school teachers and high school students. SSA trained 36 high school civics education teachers in the Training of Trainers format on incorporating ideas of citizen formation, rights and responsibilities in a practical manner in their classroom. Topics included multiculturalism and key social movements and was covered in a 4-day residential training to foster cohesion, and collaboration among the diverse teachers. The 36 teachers consisted of 18 Sinhala medium and 18 Tamil medium civics education teachers at the Ordinary Level in Galle, Matara, Hambantota, and Ampara with a mix of teachers who have participated in previous SSA programming and those new to its network. As part of those trainings, SSA staff then worked with the teachers to craft their own practical programmes to be implemented in their respective schools, reaching at least 1260 Ordinary Level students in the 36 classrooms. SSA staff guided the teachers from the conception of ideas to execution in the schools, and provided feedback and support along the way.

The SSA and Everyday Peace Indicators (EPI) together created and conducted the final survey that explored the beliefs, narratives, and ideologies underlying the perception of effective peace and reconciliation in Sri Lanka. Since 2018, SSA has assisted United States Institute of Peace (USIP) with collecting data from 30 communities in Sri Lanka to develop peace indicators. SSA resurveyed 18 communities using the 2019 indicators and the new indicators generated by the EPI team where they have already conducted Focused Group Discussions (FGDs) and generated new instruments. The information from this project will be used to inform one of USAID’s large reconciliation projects, SCORE, which is intended to help them design a project that is well-informed by how the local communities themselves view reconciliation.

This research intended to serve both academic and practical purposes. On the one hand, it attempted to understand how people engage in civic spaces, which is academically significant for those interested in studying the function of civic space in the social, political, cultural, and economic context of Sri Lanka. On the other, the study was primarily designed for and focused on a practical goal: to provide an understanding of the factors to be considered when implementing interventions to strengthen the civic space in Sri Lanka. The study examined the civic space available for citizen participation and the freedom of association to conduct inter-communal initiatives in order to make the study more pertinent for the inter-communal initiatives that will be implemented by the National Peace Council in the future.
The report produced by SSA on the findings of this research was launched by the NPC on 17th March 2023.

Two discussions in a series of discussions on democracy in South Asia were hosted by SSA in 2023. The first entitled ‘The Political Economy of Neoliberal Hindu Nationalism in India’ was with Alf Gunvald Nilsen, Professor, Department of Sociology and Director, the Centre for Asian Studies in Africa, University of Pretoria and was held on 22 May 2023. Dr. Gunvald attempted to unpack the relationship between economic inequality and political power in Modi’s India.

Another discussion with Dr. Shyamain Wickramasingha, Research Fellow, Department of Management, Business School, University of Sussex, UK; and Visiting Fellow, Center for Business and Development Studies, Copenhagen Business School, Denmark was held at the SSA on 28 June 2023.  She discussed how the Covid-19 pandemic and the current economic crisis have affected workers in the Sri Lankan apparel industry, drawing from her on-going research based on discussions with manufacturers, labour representatives, industry authorities, and workers.

As the inaugural event of its collaboration with the OSUN Forum on Democracy and Development, SSA hosted the “South Asian Dialogue on Democracy and Development” on 9^th and 10^th May 2024 in Colombo, Sri Lanka. The dialogue explored democracy in its political, social and economic dimensions as applicable to the South Asian context. The overarching objective of the dialogue was to deliberate on categories for critical reflection appropriate to South Asia as well as to build networks and collaborations between researchers and research institutions within the region.

The SSA organized a short course on democracy and community engagement for 20 undergraduates and recent graduates. Sessions were led by senior academics and experts, and engaged participants on a range of concepts surrounding democracy. It also offered some technical insights into the use of certain media to engage critically with contemporary socio-political issues.