Category Archives: life stories

Nira Wickramasinghe nee Samarasinghe was educated in France, and Oxford University and taught at the Dept of History, Colombo University before she snared the prestigious post of Professor of Modern South Asian Studies at the Leiden University Institute for Area Studies — a new position facilitated in part by the Leiden University Fund (LUF) and designed to provide a contribution to this field for a period of five years in the form of the LUF Chair.

For her profile NIRA says : “My primary interests are identity politics, everyday life under colonialism and the relationship between state and society in modern South Asia. I have pursued these interests through investigation into such diverse themes as politics of dress, civil society, citizens and migrants, and objects of consumption. Trained as a historian, I have written on late colonial and modern Sri Lanka, using a variety of archives. In the last few years, my work has moved from a focus on national history albeit from a non-state perspective to an approach that contests the nation as a frame and attempts to capture other dimensions of belonging which might be best encapsulated in the term ‘‘post-national’’. I am currently working on a book on ordinary peoples’ encounter with the ‘‘modern’’ using as a lens machines such as the sewing machine, gramophone, tram and bicycle. In addition to my research and teaching I intervene regularly in public debates and contribute essays and op.eds to Opendemocracy and the Wall Street Journal.” Continue reading →