Vagisha Gunasekara begins her tenure as the Executive Director of the American Institute for Lankan Studies (the AISLS Colombo Centre) on October 3, 2016. Vagisha studies particular entanglements of gender and conflict in rapidly changing situations in the South Asia…
Dennis McGilvray, Emeritus Professor of Anthropology at the University of Colorado at Boulder, has been elected AISLS President. His term will run to October, 2016. McGilvray is the author of Crucible of Conflict: Tamil and Muslim Society on the East…
The life of the distinguished anthropologist Stanley Jeyaraja Tambiah (1929-2014) was celebrated in a session at the 5th AISLS graduate student workshop, which was held at Stanford University on November 7th, 2014. AISLS would like to thank Charles Hallisey, Thomas…
AISLS is very pleased to announce the publication of A Guide to Locating Photographs of Colonial Ceylon, compiled by Benita Stambler, Coordinator of Asian Art at the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art in Sarasota, Florida. This guide documents…
AISLS is pleased to announce the publication of Theresa McGarry & Liyanage Amarakeerthi’s English Translations of the Reading Passages in James W. Gair & W.S. Karunatilaka, Literary Sinhala (Ithaca: Cornell University South Asia Program and Department of Modern Languages and…
The linguist M.W. Sugathapala de Silva (1931-1980) was a leading figure in the study of South Asian linguistics, producing works on the Sinhala, Sanskrit, Telugu and Vedda languages. AISLS is very grateful to his heirs for granting us permission to…
The 2014 Sri Lanka Graduate Conference will be held on November 7th and 8th at the Center for South Asia at Stanford University. The conference is co-funded by the American Institute for Sri Lankan Studies and the Center for South…
On August 1–4 2014, fourteen scholars from eight countries met near Aurangabad, Maharashtra in a workshop on Sufi shrines sponsored by six American Overseas Research Centers and organized and hosted by the American Institute of Indian Studies. Participants included two…
Two distinguished scholars, Professor James W. Gair of Cornell University and Professor W.S. Karunatillake of Kelaniya University, worked together to promote the understanding and study of Sinhala and South Asian linguistics for nearly five decades, from 1965 until Professor Karunatillake’s…
On 14 July 2014, AISLS held a full day workshop in Colombo on the Sidat Sangara, a medieval Sri Lankan scholastic work written as a guide for the composition of Sinhala poetry. This text had a long-standing influence on Sinhala…
