Magic Maids at Université Paris 1, Pantheon-Sorbonne

https://polity.lk/nadeera-rajapakse-magic-maids-sweeping-up-a-storm-at-the-sorbonne

Magic Maids: Sweeping Up a Storm at the Sorbonne

Nadeera Rajapakse

 

Aug 14, 2025 | Labour

 
 
 

After performing in several theatres across Paris, Eisa Jocson and Venuri Perera bewitched the spectators, students, and startled passers-by at the Pantheon Centre of the University Paris 1, Pantheon-Sorbonne in March 2025. They swept through the halls of the 18th century building, housing the second oldest university in Europe, to embody women migrant domestic workers.


Venuri Perera and Eisa Jocson at the University Paris 1, Pantheon-Sorbonne
Photo credit: Jean-Remy Mallek

Their representation was hailed by an eager audience of economists, historians, philosophers, political scientists, anthropologists, geographers, working on and interested in various related subjects. A roundtable session among scholars and artists, bound by common themes of female labour, exploitation, and agency, was followed by a general discussion between the two dancers and guests.

Among the many compelling insights shared, one particularly resonant idea was that the deepest intellectual understanding often arises through embodied experience. In the novel Expectation, the author describes how this can happen: “suddenly the knowledge arrives, hitting her body before her mind. It spikes her blood, makes her heart race, her palms damp” (Hope 2019: 251). Accordingly, in Magic Maids, resistance is articulated through movement, the dancers physically and symbolically reclaim the figure of the domestic worker. In the following commentary, I will discuss the idea of resistance, its significance in this context, and the narrative power of the performance in reclaiming the idealised image of women.


Roundtable discussion with Emmanuel Charrier (moderator), Jules Ramage (visual artist), Muriel Gilardone (economic historian specialising in gender and economics), Mickaëlle Provost (philosopher), Elodie Bertrand (economic historian, editor of
Routledge Handbook of Commodification).
Photo credit: Jean-Remy Mallek

Firstly, resistance comes in the shape of exposing the disturbing aspects of migration for domestic work. For one, the fundamental contradiction structuring Sri Lanka’s migration economy: the systematic social devaluation of women’s domestic labour against its staggering economic contributions. The state’s reliance on 8.4 billion USD in annual remittances, of which 54% are from domestic workers (CBSL 2023), exists in violent tension with cultural imaginaries that render these workers as ‘demure’, ‘docile’, and ‘disposable’, while being remittance-sending ‘heroines’.

The aesthetic framing of domestic workers as ‘smiling, docile’ figures emerges from deep cultural constructs. The ideal female figure in religious, nationalist, and cultural tropes lacks agency, existing in submission to men or gods (Sreenivasan 1975, de Mel 2001, de Silva 2004). Added to that is a narrow version of “purity” as well as “pedagogies of respectability” (de Alwis 2022). This has translated into general media representations where most Sri Lankan newspaper articles frame migrant workers mostly as either “victims” or “heroines” (Rata Viruwo in Sinhala), denying complex subjectivity. This is just like the female ideal in certain religious representations: they are either pure, chaste, and submissive, or they are all-powerful, destructive goddesses. The Vessantara Jātaka’s ideal of female self-sacrifice finds an echo in the state rhetoric celebrating “heroines” sending remittances, making resilience and silent endurance the most acclaimed qualities in “good” maids (de Silva 2004).

In keeping with economic market logic, the supply of migrant labour is endless, coming from many South Asian nations competing with one another, whereas demand from employers (mostly in the Middle East) powerfully dictates all terms of employment. Hence, women migrant workers are disposable, easily replaceable. The dancers, Jocson and Perera, recount discovering “24 nails driven into her body, like a living voodoo doll”, referring to a real experience of a migrant worker. Again, the contradiction is made obvious: the horrific exploitation of bodies that literally constitute the nation’s economic lifeline. Sri Lanka’s 1.2 million migrant domestic workers generate about 30% of total remittances, 6.7% of GDP (World Bank 2023). And yet, the institutional recognition of the value of their labour remains an uphill struggle: only in 2020 was the promise made to upgrade domestic work to the skilled labour category (Mudugamuwa 2020), while standard employment contracts under the Foreign Employment Act, and ILO Convention 189 ratification still do not take full account of domestic work.

Venuri Perera and Eisa Jocson shedding docility, resisting purity.
Photo credit: Jean-Remy Mallek

These institutional failures mirror the “social reproduction paradox”, i.e., the simultaneous economic reliance on and symbolic annihilation of care work under financialised capitalism (Elson 2012). In the course of their performance, Jocson and Perera narrate: “even if you hit her, she may say ‘hit me baby, one more time’”, laying bare the paradox where ‘docile’ workers must be simultaneously productive enough to remit and disposable enough to replace.

Another revelation from the duo is about racialised market hierarchies. The performance’s mocking comparison between “a Filipina” and “a cheaper Sri Lankan” exposes what Bridget Anderson (2000) terms “hierarchies of servitude” in global care chains. Recruitment agencies actively cultivate this in terms of salary differentials: a Filipina worker is paid double the wage received monthly by a Sri Lankan domestic worker in many Middle Eastern countries (Esim and Smith 2004); skills framing: Most Sri Lankan agencies advertise workers as “more submissive and easier to mould” vs. Filipinas as commanding “more respect” (Jureidni and Moukarbel 2004: 6). Above all, “Sri Lankan” or “Sri Lanki” is synonymous with domestic worker, so much so that if the domestic worker is from the Philippines, the question would be “Is your Sri Lankan a Filipina?” (Jureidni and Moukarbel 2004: 5). Jocson and Perera rephrase the question for the French audience (and French employers), asking where their “Sri Lankan” is from: Algeria? Romania? The Republic of Guinea? 

Discussing embodied resistance: dancers and participants at University Paris 1, Pantheon-Sorbonne.
Photo credit: Leonie Seince, Maya Abou Imad, Iris Chaput, Lucie Liu

The devaluation of migrant workers is seen in other disturbing institutional shortcomings and exclusions. While Sri Lanka’s economic crisis has intensified reliance on migrant earnings—remittances cover 128% of the trade deficit according to the Central Bank (CBSL 2023)—the 2023 national Budget allocated only a paltry amount to migrant welfare; only a handful of returnee workers access reintegration programs (IOM 2023) and the majority of migrant households do not use bank accounts, especially for remittances. Most have no pension contributions despite working close to a decade abroad (ILO 2021).

On the other hand, restrictive regulation is palmed more on migrants than on markets. In the SLBFE curriculum, mandatory household training encourages submission (Handapangoda 2023, Jureidni and Moukarbel 2004). There are bans on pregnancy, marriage (Ireland 2018), and unionisation (Amnesty International 2025), while non-payment of wages, non-compliance with labour laws, and non-respect of basic worker rights go unpunished.

By framing domestic work as ‘natural’ feminine traits rather than skilled labour, global labour markets exclude them from formal economic accounting. Then the idealised yet paradoxical requirements are piled on: maids need to perform docility and as a result, suppress emotions for job security. They need to channel productivity to super-human levels: An average workday in Gulf Cooperation Council countries is 17 hours (ILO 2021), which they endure stoically, leading to chronic health conditions.

Lynch documents how Sri Lankan migrant workers face “moral censure for transgressing spatial boundaries” (2007: 92), stigmatised as “fallen” women for monetising domesticity while remaining culturally obligated to perform it, unpaid, at home. These contradictions add up, with the state praising women’s economic contributions while denying them labour rights, which Jayawardena describes as “patriarchal ventriloquism” (2016: 24).

Venuri Perera, wielding the brooms wildly
(Still from video footage)
Credit: Leonie Sence, Iris Chaput, Maya Abou Imad, Lucie Liu and Theo Milon

But then, the Magic Maids strike. Jocson and Perera viscerally demonstrate that the same bodies disciplined into docility can erupt into wild, powerful dancing, symbolising the latent agency within apparent submission. This agency becomes discernible, palpable, when we shed the gendered, capitalist lenses above. Despite moral, physical, and institutional risks, which are well-documented, Sri Lankan women continue migrating at unprecedented rates.

This constitutes not merely economic pragmatism, but a strike against the gendered, spatial order. Migrant women transmit subversive “gender remittances” (Levitt and Lamba-Nieves 2011) that slowly corrode patriarchal ideology in sending communities. These narratives weaponise the very mobility that moralists decry. Their efforts have led to movements, like the ILO C189 campaign, which have forced recognition of domestic work as skilled labour providing potent examples of “capability metrics” (Piper 2017). In Sri Lanka, returnee workers now demand pension contributions, not as supplicants, but as creditors of a national economy that they sustain.

By migrating to take up work that challenges traditional ideals of domestic femininity, and through subtle defiance of religious or moral ideals that confine them to obedience and purity, women migrant domestic workers show resistance.

The performance epitomises the central contradiction: these women are economically indispensable, yet socially expendable. Their labour props up GDP while their contribution is undervalued, a paradox sustained by gendered architectures. Yet as the performance’s climactic shift from slow, robotic sweeping to wails, vigour, and piercing eye contact reminds us, even the most disciplined bodies harbour the capacity to disrupt the scripts written upon them. The true measure of feminist praxis lies not in lamenting oppression, but in tracing, as this commentary has attempted, the fault lines where agency erupts through the cracks of constraint. 

Venuri Perera, defying norms of docility
(Still from video footage)
Credit: Leonie Sence, Iris Chaput, Maya Abou Imad, Lucie Liu and Theo Milon


Nadeera Rajapakse
is an assistant professor at the University of Paris 1, Pantheon-Sorbonne in the History of Economic Thought and in English for Economics. She is a member of the PHARE (Philosophy, History and the Analysis of Economic Representation) research department and her current areas of research include development and identity, women migrant domestic workers, and migration and identity.

 

References
Amnesty International. (2025). Locked In. Left out. The Hidden Lives of Kenyan Domestic Workers in Saudi Arabia. London: Amnesty International. Available at https://www.amnesty.nl/content/uploads/2025/05/Amnesty-Kenya-Saudi-workers.pdf?x69908

Amnesty International. (2014). “My Sleep is My Break”: Exploitation of Migrant Domestic Workers in Qatar. Available at https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/mde22/004/2014/en/

Anderson, Bridget. (2000). Doing the Dirty Work? The global politics of domestic labour. London: Zed Books.

Central Bank of Sri Lanka (CBSL). (2023). Annual Economic Review. Available at https://www.cbsl.gov.lk/en/publications/economic-and-financial-reports/annual-economic-review/annual-economic-review-2023

De Alwis, Malathi. (2022). “The Production and Embodiment of Respectability: Gendered Demeanours in Colonial Ceylon”. In Kanchana Ruwanpura, Caryll Tozer, Chulani Kodikara, Sonali Deraniyagala, Vraie Cally Balthazar (Eds.). Her Smile Lingers. Malathi de Alwis Selected Essays. Colombo: International Centre for Ethnic Studies.

De Mel, Neloufer. (2001). Women & the Nation’s Narrative: Gender and Nationalism in Twentieth-Century Sri Lanka. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield.

De Silva, Neluka. (2004). The Gendered Nation: Contemporary Writings from South Asia, London: Sage.

Department of Technical Education and Training. (2023). National Competency Standards (NCS) Catalogue. Colombo: DTET. Available at http://www.dtet.gov.lk/nvq_standards

Elson, Diane. (2012). “Social Reproduction in the Global Crisis: Rapid Recovery or Long-Lasting Depletion?” In Peter Utting, Shahra Razavi, and Rebecca Varghese Buchholz (Eds.). The Global Crisis and Transformative Social Change (63-80). Palgrave Macmillan

Esim, Simel, and Monica Smith (Eds). (2004). Gender and Migration in Arab States. The case of domestic workers. Beirut: International Labour Organization. Available at https://www.ilo.org/publications/gender-and-migration-arab-states-case-domestic-workers

Handapangoda, Wasana. (2023). “Migrant domestic workers in the Arabian Gulf”. Ingenere (2 February): https://www.ingenere.it/en/articles/migrant-domestic-workers-arabian-gulf

Hope, Anna. (2020). Expectation. Black Swan.

International Organization for Migration (IOM). (2023). “Chapter 5 – Migrant-facing Information Initiatives”. In IRIS Handbook for Governments on Ethical Recruitment and Migrant Worker Protection. IOM, Geneva. Available at https://publications.iom.int/system/files/pdf/pub2023-034-l-iris-handbook-for-govt-ch5.pdf

International Labour Organization (ILO). (2021). Making Decent Work a Reality for Domestic Workers: Progress and Prospects Ten Years after the Adoption of the Domestic Workers Convention, 2011 (No. 189), Geneva: International Labour Organization. Available at https://www.ilo.org/publications/major-publications/making-decent-work-reality-domestic-workers-progress-and-prospects-ten

Ireland, Patrick. (2018). “The limits of sending-state power”. International Political Science Review 39 (3): 322-337.

Jayawardena, Kumari. (2016). Feminism and Nationalism in the Third World. New York: Verso Books.

Jayawardena, Kumari and Rachel Kurian. (2015). Class, Patriarchy and Ethnicity on Sri Lankan Plantations: Two Centuries of Power and Protest. New Delhi: Orient Blackswan.

Jureidni, Ray, and Nayla Moukarbel. (2004). “Female Sri Lankan domestic workers in Lebanon: A case of ‘contract slavery’?” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 30 (4): 581-607.

Levitt, Peggy, and Deepak Lamba-Nieves. (2011). “Social Remittances Revisited.” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 37 (1):1-22.

Lynch, Caitrin. (2007). Juki Girls, Good Girls: Gender and Cultural Politics in Sri Lanka’s Global Garment Industry. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

Piper, Nicola. (2017). “Migration and the SDGs.” Global Social Policy, 17 (2): 231-238.

Sreenivasan, M.A. (1975). “Panchakanya – An Age-old Benediction”. In Devaki Jain (Ed.). Indian Women (51-58). New Delhi: Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, India.

Mudugamuwa, Maheesha. (2020). “Skills development for domestic workers. From Housemaid to Housekeeping assistant”. The Morning (23 September): https://www.themorning.lk/articles/98732

World Bank. (2023). “Personal remittances, received (% of GDP) – Sri Lanka”. World Bank Open Data – Sri Lanka. Available at https://data.worldbank.org/country/sri-lanka

Sri Lanka – 6 months on

https://www.lse.ac.uk/south-asia-centre/events/archive/Spring-Term-2025

London School of Economics Event – Sri Lanka 6 months on

As the ‘AKD’ government of President Anura Kumara Dissanayake marks 6 months, how is Sri Lanka now? This panel will discuss the country’s current economic and political situation as it recovers from a period of severe crisis and, looking ahead, what needs to be done in different sectors domestically, regionally and globally for Sri Lanka to emerge as a confident and stable power.

SPEAKERS: Harsha Amarasekera PC is a leading commerical lawyer, and Chairman, Colombo Port City Economic Commission, alongside several other leading positions in the private sector; Farzana Haniffa (@FaraFarout) is Professor of Sociology, University of Colombo, and Member, Human Rights Commission, Sri Lanka; Dr Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu (@PSaravanamuttu), an LSE alumnus, is Founder and Executive Director, Centre for Policy Alternatives, Colombo.

DISCUSSANT: Dr Alan Keenan (@akeenan23) is Senior Consultant for Sri Lanka, International Crisis Group, London, where he coordinates and contributes to research, advocacy and publications on Sri Lanka.    

CO-CHAIRS: Naufel Vilcassim is Director, LSE South Asia Centre (@SAsiaLSE) and Professor of Marketing at LSE; Dr Nilanjan Sarkar is Deputy Director, LSE South Asia Centre (@SAsiaLSE).

Projection/débat autour du court-métrage “Unlock”, dimanche 6 mai à 18h, Grand Rex

Le court-métrage “Unlock”, réalisé par Nirmalan Nadarajah, qui sera projeté au Grand Rex ce dimanche 6 mai à 18h en présence du réalisateur et du comédien Shobasakthi.
Pour information, vous trouverez ci-joints une affiche, une bande-annonce et un lien vers la page du film

keynote lectures for crafts conference “Tradition or Trans/formation? Craft, Practice and Discourse”, Jaffna, 10 May

You are cordially invited to the inauguration of a International interdisciplinary trilingual conference on craft

Tradition or Trans/formation? Craft, Practice and Discourse

Organized by
The Department of Fine Arts, University of Jaffna in collaboration with

American Institute for Lankan Studies, Colombo
Lanka Decorative Arts, Colombo
Sri Lankan Archive for Contemporary Art, Architecture and Design, Jaffna

10thMay 2018 at 3.00 pm

Jaffna Public library Auditorium

Keynotes

“Transformation at the heart of tradition: A history of the institutionalization

of craft in South Asia”

Anais Da Fonseca (Tate Research Center: Asia, London)

and

Vishwakarma craftsmen, guilds and caste issues in Pre- Colonial South India

Vijaya Ramaswamy (Centre for Historical studies, JNU, New Delhi)

“Pathways to Leadership: Perspectives from Accomplished Women Leaders from from the Legal Field” Panel discussion organized by USAID, at The Royal Mall (Kandy), on 10th May 2018

Notable women lawyers speak about the challenges they faced in their professional and personal journeys to success and how they overcame these hurdles. Panel discussion followed by a networking event

Thursday, 10th May 2018, 2.30 p.m. – 5.30 p.m. at The Royal Mall (No. 18/903, William Goppallawa Mawatha, Kandy)

Email events@corejustice.org or call on 11 257 5603/4 to confirm participation (limited seating available)

Download the flyer: Flyer – Pathways to Leadership – KANDY

Film Screening of “DEMONS IN PARADISE” at ICES Auditorium, on 8th August 2017, at 4.30PM

Synopsis

Sri Lanka, 1983: Jude Ratnam was five years old. He fled the massacre of the Tamils instigated by the majority-Sinhalese government on a red train.
Now a filmmaker, he takes the same train from the south to the north of the island.

As he advances, the traces of violence left by the 26-year-old war, which turned the Tamil’s fight for freedom into self-destructive terrorism, pass before his eyes.
Reminiscing about the fighters and Tamil Tigers, he unveils the repressed memories of his compatriots, opening the door to a new era and making peace possible again.

Demons in Paradise is the result of 10 years of work. For the first time, a Tamil documentary filmmaker living in Sri Lanka is showing the civil war from the inside.

“Where is the Conscience of Human Rights?”, Monthly Academic Circle of the Department of Social Studies (OUSL), 19th June 2017 at 2.30 p.m. at Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, The Open University of Sri Lanka, Nawala

Monthly Academic Circle

Department of Social Studies (OUSL)

Invites You for a Talk and Panel Discussion

Topic

Where is the Conscience of Human Rights?

By

Prof. Tobias Kelly, The University of Edinburgh

[Tobias Kelly teaches social anthropology at the School of Social and Political Science,

University of Edinburgh, and is coeditor of Traitors: Suspicion, Intimacy, and the Ethics

of State-Building].

Panelists

Dr. Deepika Udagama (Chairperson, Human Rights Commission)

Professor Jonathan Spencer (The University of Edinburgh)

Dr. Farzana Haniffa (University of Colombo)

Moderator: Dr Sepalika Welikala (Open University of Sri Lanka)

Date and Time:

19th June 2017 at 2.30 p.m.

Venue

Faculty Board Room

Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, The Open University of Sri Lanka,

Nawala

Contact for more info: Athula (0712279246/smasa@ou.ac.lk)

Cycle de conférences “Mondes tamouls” Première journée d’études à l’INALCO, le vendredi 16 juin 2017

En France, l’enseignement de la langue tamoule est dispensé depuis 1868 à l’Inalco, alors appelé l’Ecole impériale des langues orientales. Aujourd’hui, l’Inalco est un des rares grands établissements publics européens où l’on peut apprendre cette langue dravidienne. Notre ambition est de nous inscrire dans la continuité de cette tradition d’enseignement et de valoriser l’apprentissage de cette langue en association avec les recherches en sciences humaines et sociales. L’enseignement à l’Inalco, actuellement orienté vers toutes les formes de la langue tamoule (classique, contemporaine, écrite et orale), permet un accès direct aux sources autant écrites qu’orales.
Pour favoriser le développement des études tamoules et pour replacer l’Inalco au cœur de l’enseignement du tamoul en association avec la recherche, nous mettons en place un cycle de conférences scientifiques annuel intitulé « Mondes tamouls », qui prendra la forme de journées d’études.
Ce projet, sur le long terme, a trois objectifs principaux : donner une visibilité aux recherches liées au domaine tamoul, initier et intéresser les étudiants en Licence et Master aux divers objets de recherche et mettre en place des collaborations institutionnelles et internationales.
Le thème retenu pour la première journée d’études, qui aura lieu le vendredi 16 juin 2017, est « Tamoul : regards pluridisciplinaires ». Cette première édition, introductive et générale, a vocation à réunir à l’Inalco des chercheurs et enseignants de différentes disciplines, travaillant sur le domaine tamoul et membres de diverses équipes de recherche nationales pour présenter l’état actuel de la recherche française.

Dates :

Vendredi 16 Juin 2017 – de 10:00 à 18:00
Lieu :

Inalco – Amphithéâtre 2 – 65 rue des Grands Moulins – 75013 PARIS
Pour télécharger le programme : a3programme

Organisation et contact :
Uthaya Veluppillai (uthaya.veluppillai@inalco.fr)
Source: http://www.inalco.fr/evenement/cycle-conferences-mondes-tamouls-premiere-journee-etudes

 

Table ronde sur Sri Lanka à Edimbourg

Une table ronde consacrée à la situation politique et sociale actuelle de Sri Lanka est organisée à Edimbourg le 26 et 27 mai 2016 par Jonathan Spencer, professeur d’anthropologie à l’Université.
Nous reproduisons ci-dessous le programme provisoire de ces journées d’étude:

Sri Lanka Roundtable (DRAFT PROGRAMME)
Edinburgh 26-27 May, 2016

Thursday 26 May, Techcube, Summerhall (t.b.c)
9.00-9.15 Introduction and welcome
9.15-11.00 Youth and war Isabelle Clark-Decès (Princeton), Youth in the cultural politics of contemporary Jaffna
Dhana Hughes (Durham), Sinhala Youth and Military Enlistment
Giacomo Mantovan (CEIAS/CRH, EHESS) “They were kings…” The farewell to arms of former Tamil Tiger fighters in exile in France
Giyani Venya De Silva (Oxford) Living with continuity, waiting for change: commentaries from students in Colombo
11.00-11.15 Coffee
11.15-12.45 Gender Asha Abeysekera (Colombo) Balancing Modernity and Morality in the Sinhala-Buddhist Family Exploring the Rhetoric of Sinhala-Buddhist Nationalism
Kristine Hoglund (Uppsalla) Gender and the Pursuit of Justice in Sri Lanka: Testimonies of Peace and Conflict
Jayanthi Lingam (SOAS) Gendered working lives in the post-war transition in Jaffna district, 2009-14
12.45-1.30 Lunch
1.30-3.00 Justice and Security Georg Frerks (Utrecht), Rajapakse’s Peace’: The President’s discourse on the post-war situation in Sri Lanka (2009-2015)
Ali Brown (Amsterdam), Human Security in the Era of Sirasena
Gerrit Kurtz (KCL), The evolution of post-war transitional justice in Sri Lanka
3.00-3.15 Tea
3.15-5.00 Transitional Justice and Constitutional Reform: State of Play and Future Prospects Harini Amarasuriya (Open University and Public Representations Committee on Constitutional reform), Alan Keenan (international Crisis Group), Asanga Welikala (CPA and University of Edinburgh), with Christine Bell (University of Edinburgh)
6.00-7.00
7.30 Dinner, Mother India, Infirmary Street

Friday 27 May, Seminar Rooms 1 and 2, Chrystal Macmillan Building
Please note, in the morning we will split the space to run parallel panels in the two rooms. In the afternoon, we will open up the two rooms for our final plenary sessions.

9.00-9.15 Introduction and welcome
9.15-10.45 Work and Livelihoods (Seminar Room 1) Urs Geiser (Zurich)The making of control over land in Wattamadu – local organisations, engaging the state, changing conjunctures
Charles Wilkinson and Maura van den Kommer
(Amsterdam) Living the Uncertainty: Exploring the Effects of the EU Ban on Sri Lankan Fisheries
Joeri Scholtens and Maarten Bavinck (Amsterdam) Facilitating change from the bottom-up? Reflections on civil society efforts to empower marginalized fishers in post-war Sri Lanka
Religion and transition (Seminar Room 2) Mahinda Deegalle (Bath Spa) The Vision and Leadership of the Architect of Yahapālanaya: Venerable Māduluwāwe Sobhita’s Exemplary Role in the Political Transition of Sri Lanka in 2015
Neena Mahadev (Max Planck) Notes on contemporary religio-economic linkages between Sri Lankan & Singapore
Dominic Esler (UCL) Northern Tamil society after the war: the revival of Catholic kūttu in Mannar
10.45-11.15 Coffee
11.15-12.45 Work and Politics (Seminar Room 1) Sandya Hewamanne (Essex) Neoliberalism’s New Recruits: Tamil Workers, Human Rights Thrashings and ‘Mundane’ Politics in Post-War Sri Lanka
Mythri Jegathesan (Santa Clara) Is a progressive politics possible? Examining the contemporary intersections of industrial sustainability and political shifts in Sri Lanka’s plantation sector
Darshi Thoradeniya (Heidelberg/Colombo) Women Citizens in Welfare State of Sri Lanka
Past and present (Seminar Room 2) Deborah Winslow (NSF) Contexts of Caste
Alessandra Radicati (LSE) Precarious Patriots: Reflections on Past, Present and Future in a Coastal Community
Carolina Holgersson Ivarsson (Gothenburg), Religious identity, nationalism and social media among Sinhala-Buddhist youth
12.45-1.30 Lunch
1.30-3.30 Borders and Margins Vagisha Gunasekara,
Prashanthi Rasadhari Jayasekara,
Gayathri Hiroshani, Hallinne Lokuge,
Aftab Lall (Centre for Poverty Analysis, Colombo), Production of Marginality: Findings from a six-year research programme on basic services, social protection and livelihoods in the North and East
Jonathan Goodhand (SOAS/Melbourne), Vagisha Gunasekera (CEPA), Alice Kern (Zurich) and Thiruni Kelegama (Zurich), with Rajesh Venugopal (LSE), discussant, Sri Lanka’s borderlands and frontiers
3.30-3.45 Tea
3.45-5.30 Writing War and After Sunila Galappatti will read from her new book, A Long Watch: War, Captivity and Return in Sri Lanka, and V.V. (Sugi) Ganeshananthanan will read from her work in progress, The Missing are Considered Dead.

Also in attendance (participating but not presenting): Ashwini Vasanthakumar
(York), Dennis McGilvray (Colorado), Anne Blackburn (Cornell), Rose Fernando (Utrecht), Niels Terpstra (Utrecht), Eric Meyer (INALGO, Paris), Oivind Fuglerud (Oslo), R.L. (Jock) Stirrat (Sussex), Kanchana Ruwanpura (Edinburgh), Anthony Good (Edinburgh), Jonathan Spencer (Edinburgh), Sidharthan Maunaguru (NUS), Tanya Ekanayaka (Edinburgh), Deborah Menezes (Edinburgh)