| Nira Wickramasinghe. | |
|---|---|
| Born | May 8, 1964 Colombo, Sri Lanka |
| Nationality | Sri Lankan |
| Other names | Nira Konjit Samarasinghe |
| Education | D.Phil |
| Occupation | University Professor |
Nira Konjit Wickramasinghe is Professor of Modern South Asian Studies at Leiden University [1] in the Netherlands and a well known international academic. She was a professor in the Department of History and International Relations, University of Colombo, Sri Lanka until 2009 . She grew up in Paris and studied at the University of Paris IV - Sorbonne from 1981 to 1984 and at the University of Oxford from 1985 to 1989 where she earned her doctorate in Modern History.[2] She joined the University of Colombo in 1990 and taught there until 2009. She has been a World Bank Robert McNamara fellow, a Fulbright senior scholar at New York University, a visiting professor at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris, and more recently British Academy Fellow at St Antony's College, Oxford. She is currently working on a history of the reception of the sewing machine in colonial Sri Lanka, a topic which she researched while on sabbatical at the Shelby Cullom Davis Center for Historical Studies Princeton University in 2008-2009.[3]
Nira Wickramasinghe has published the following books:[4]
Sri Lanka in the modern age: A history of contested identities. London: Hurst & Co. and Honolulu: University of Hawaii press, 2006.
Civil society in Sri Lanka: New circles of power. New Delhi: Sage Publications, c2001.[5]
Ethnic politics in colonial Sri Lanka, 1927–1947''. New Delhi: Vikas Pub. House, 1995.
University space and values: Three essays''. Colombo: International Centre for Ethnic Studies Colombo, 2005.
L'Invention du Vetement national au Sri Lanka. Habiller le corps colonise''. Paris: Karthala Presse, 2006.