Colombo Institute, photo courtesy of Pooja Kalita.

The Colombo Institute for Human Sciences has become the Heritage as Placemaking Project’s newest partner starting on May 1, 2025. Dr Sasanka Perera, one of our principal investigators, has become chairman of CI after moving to Sri Lanka from India in August 2024. Along with him, our research fellow Dr Pooja Kalita has also become affiliated with CI. 

Colombo Institute for Human Sciences is a think tank and research organization located in Rajagiriya, Sri Lanka in close proximity to the country’s political and administrative capital, Sri Jayawardena Pura. CI aims to provide an enabling environment to create intellectual rigor and innovative thinking in areas of socio-cultural knowledge production in Sri Lanka through a holistic approach. It works as a small alternative forum for thinking, working and conducting regular conversations across South Asia and the world. CI thrives in creating research and intellectual networks across South Asia and beyond, such as HaP.

As part of HaP, they will be affiliated with the decolonisation strand of the research project. Postcolonial scholarship is employed as a critical tool to analyze colonial entanglements in South Asia. Work continues within our field sites, with Dr Perera’s focus being concentrated on pilgrim sites and practices in India, Sri Lanka and Nepal, observing cultural heritage and its interpretation through a critical perspective. 

Dr. Perera along with the Colombo Institute will continue to curate the public seminars and the podcasts from the series on Decolonisation as part of one of HaP’s theoretical strands. 

More information about Colombo Institute is available from its website: https://www.colomboinstitute.lk/  

It can be reached via email at: info@colomboinstitute.lk