Nira Wickramasinghe is a professor in the department of history and international relations, the University of Colombo, Sri Lanka. She grew up in Paris and studied at the Université de Paris IV-Sorbonne and at Oxford University, where she earned her doctorate.

Among her books are Civil Society in Sri Lanka: New Circles of Power (New Delhi, Thousand Oaks/ Sage, 2001); Dressing the Colonised Body: Politics, Clothing and Identity in Colonial Sri Lanka (New Delhi, Orient Longman, 2003); and Sri Lanka in the Modern Age: A History of Contested Identities (C Hurst and University of Hawaii Press, 2006).

Recent articles

The passionate, lyrical voice of the poet from Martinique was part of a lifework that embrace négritude, Marxism and surrealism all in one, says Nira Wickramasinghe.

The perspective of war-torn Sri Lanka casts a different light on the multicultural framework advocated in Tariq Modood's new work, says Nira Wickramasinghe.

The exclusivist politics and mindsets of those who have drowned Sri Lanka in civil war must be challenged by a creative recovery of the island's hybrid identities, says Nira Wickramasinghe.