PhD 2014-2018

• The PhD thesis titled ‘Beautiful Mistakes: An Ethnographic Study of Women’s Lives after Marriage in a Rural Sinhala Village’ details of women’s position in households and their roles as wives and mothers. The findings were supported by a 14-month ethnography in a rural village in the dry zone of Sri Lanka. The village itself has been subject to periodical changes that have impacted village life. Contrary to popular discourses, this has not disintegrated village life.  From my exploration of women’s lives this thesis shows the mechanisms that enable integration to be achieved amidst developmental changes. Moreover, women play a central role in keeping family life together. Within the parameters of women’s responsibilities as caregivers, they are able to build and maintain the household and preserve a public image of a ‘good house’. However, at times houses are engulfed by problems that rupture marriages and family lives. In such instances, I show how women work to restore their marriages and family lives by strategically enlisting the help of their children, affines, kin, close friends and the state. When these prove inadequate, I show how women turn to supernatural solutions such as sorcery. Women also use virtual resources in the form of televisions and mobile phones to find relief from the suffering that occurs in the home. In efforts to restore family life, women are working within structures of subjugation rather than challenging them. Women’s capacity to mend ruptures in marriage and family life causes them to see their lives as a series of ‘beautiful mistakes’. Family life is necessary, valued and important for the women in this thesis, but it is also a source of pain and suffering.

BHESA 2010-2012

• In the project ‘Biomedical and Health Experimentation in South Asia: Critical Perspectives on collaboration, governance and competition’ [BHESA], based in the Human Genetics Unit, Faculty of Medicine, University of Colombo, I worked as a Research Associate from November 2010 to August 2012. BHESA was a collaboration between 15 researchers at the Centre for South Asian Studies at the University of Edinburgh; Department of Anthropology, University of Durham; Anusadhan Trust in India; Social Science Baha in Nepal and the Human Genetics Unit (HGU) at the Faculty of Medicine, University of Colombo. The Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and The Department for International Development (DfID) research schemes funded the project. The primary focus of the project was to document and describe the development of experimental research projects specifically related to health in the South Asian region. For this purpose we looked at clinical trials in medicine and both cluster randomised trials as well as other experimental interventions in public health, taking place in India, Nepal and Sri Lanka. More details about the project can be obtained at www.bhesa.org In the capacity of Research Associate I managed all fieldwork, which included participant observation at case study sites and in-depth interviews with respondents in Sri Lanka, transcribing and analysing the data using Atlas.ti Qualitative Data Analysis Software and engaged in writing papers (lead author in one paper and co-authoring one) and presenting them at local and international conferences on behalf of the collaboration.