I am a lecturer at the Department of Languages at the Open University of Sri Lanka, and currently a doctoral researcher at the Chair of English Literature at the Technische Universität Dresden (TUD), Germany where my research project focuses on literary configurations of South Asian Masculinities in contexts of war and conflict.
Previously, I graduated from the University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka with a BA Honours degree in English and from the University of Colombo with an MA degree in English Studies. My research related to female representation in media, women’s work, and gender in conflict has been presented at a number of international conferences including ones hosted at the University of Basel, Switzerland; University of the Thai Chamber of Commerce, Thailand; Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar Marathwada University, India; and Erciyes University, Turkey. Research papers have been published in a number of journals including Journal of South Asian Studies, Contemporary South Asia, South Asian Survey, and Journal of International Women’s Studies and an edited volume by Massey University, NZ.
I have taught courses in women’s poetry, postcolonial novels, gender and literature, critical thinking, academic writing and reading at a number of Sri Lankan Universities and recent teaching work at the Chair of English Literature at TUD has included, among other things, war poetry, violence in literature, and aesthetics of disruption in subversive re-writing.
Current Research:
My doctoral research project is located at the intersections of masculinity, conflict, and narrative. Drawing on theoretical work related to both violence and gender, I aim to provide an in-depth critique of the configurations of men and masculinities contained in a selection of South Asian conflict literature to illustrate the ways in which violent conflicts and their aftermaths shape and transform masculinities and their potential implications vis-à-vis hegemonic configurations of masculinity. More specifically, I am interested in the productive capacity of violence and look to elaborate how the myriad pressures of war and conflict in the subcontinent may contest, subvert, reimagine, reconstruct, or resuscitate patriarchal paradigms of masculinity and manhood in South Asia.
Alongside doctoral research, I have worked on related topics of violence, gender, and nationalism in South Asia and two papers are due to appear in edited volumes titled “Nation, Nationalism, and Secularism in South Asian Literature” and “Thicker than blood? Masculinities and Male Friendships in South Asia”. In addition, I am also co-editing an edited volume titled “Contemporary Sri Lankan Literature and Art: The Creation of a New Community in the Aftermath of War” to be published by Routledge.
Areas of Study:
South Asian literature, Nation and nationalism, Gender in conflict, Women and work, Masculinity