Sri Lanka

I started conducting research in June 1992, while a master's degree student at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies (now Yale School of the Environment). My early research focused on park management and nature conservation, which later turned into a focus on electricity production for my doctoral studies. In 2002, I received a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Research and Writing grant to investigate the displacement of the Sri Lanka's northern Muslim community to the northwestern (Wayamba) Province. While pursuing my MacArthur-funded project, the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami struck the island. In 2004, I transitioned from research and development work with the internally-displaced Muslim community to full-time humanitarian assistance and development work in both tsunami and conflict-affected regions of the island.

My latest research is entitled: After relocation: Place making, mobility and the conjunctures of resettlement programming following displacement

Abstract: Post-disaster and post-conflict resettlement programming often entails relocation. Relocation does not necessarily abrogate ties to one’s point of origin. Relocated communities and their ‘new places’ are neither static nor fixed, but actively constructed through social and political relationships with kin, state authority, and aid agencies. In this project, I build upon my conflict and tsunami research and work experience (2005-2009) to understand how families have created place in relocation villages almost a decade later (2016-18), and the role that aid agencies and state authority play in that place making. I will investigate what social, economic, political and cultural ties families relocated to three new villages maintain with their original residences, the changing nature of the relationship between these two sites (i.e., dual home bases, or patterns of circulation that contribute to survival), and how newly-resettled families make relocation villages into places to remake lives. Each of these three relocation villages followed a particular housing reconstruction model: self-settlement in Kalutara, donor-driven in Hambantota, and owner driven in Mannar and Batticaloa. A comparative approach to resettlement mechanisms will illuminate the ways that relationships among “assisting governments, aid agencies," and displaced populations (Barrios, 2014: 330) shape place making and enable recovery. This research contributes to the literature on place making in Sri Lanka and forces an examination of aid agency assumptions about community and place, intervening in current debates on building resilient communities in the context of conflict and disaster.

In each location, I will examine dynamics of place making via the following research questions:

1. How do relocated families create a sense of place in relocation villages?

2. How, and to what extent, are families in relocation villages mobile and maintaining ties to their former residences/villages?

3. How did relationships between the donor, implementing I/NGO, local government authorities, and resettling families during the resettlement processes shape sense of place and place making?

4. Over the past decade, how does place making enable families in relocated villages to manage new conditions, make life meaningful, and secure both their lives and livelihoods?