Philippa Gregory found Mary Boleyn when she was hunting for a female pirate. It was in a book about the Tudor navy that she discovered a ship named after Anne Boleyn’s sister. For a moment Gregory was certain there must have been a mistake. But there in the footnotes was Mary, and in her the … Continue reading
Sri Lankan activists will tell you that the island has a commission culture. In the last 15 years alone, people have stood up and testified before dozens of committees – some, such as the Udalagama Commission, investigating human rights abuses, and others, such as the Mahanama Tilakaratne and Paranagama Commissions, looking into abductions and … Continue reading
Wilpattu, Sri Lanka’s oldest and largest national park, was once a warzone. The fighting between the Sri Lankan state and the militant separatist group Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) that began in the 1980s had spilled over into these wild lands. Wildlife researchers Anjali Watson and Andrew Kittle remember hearing stories from soldiers stationed … Continue reading
Less than a decade after the end of the war, Colombo’s skyline has undergone a rapid transformation. Across the city, high-rise complexes have sprung up, and are billed as the practical solution to a housing crisis affecting the city’s working poor. The names of these towering structures – Methsara Uyana, Lakmuthu Sevana and Sirisara Uyana … Continue reading
The raucous troupe of monkeys that visit Dr. Jinie Dela’s house in Panadura do not realize how closely they are being studied. Dr.Dela, a biologist, with a doctoral degree in primate ecology and behaviour, treats her sprawling one-acre garden like an enormous, open laboratory. The primates who come visiting, sometimes on a daily basis, have … Continue reading
For a change, Kevin Sanders has decided to let someone, or more accurately, something else count the apples in his orchard. This isn’t the first time his idyllic farm down in Australia’s Yarra Valley has played host to robots and their handlers, so Sanders knows what to expect. Moving soundlessly down the corridors between trees, … Continue reading
When Ahilan Arulanantham heard that the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation had named him a recipient of the $625,000 “Genius Grant,” one of the first things he thought about was how much he would like to spend some of it on supporting human rights work in Sri Lanka. Since the announcement was made … Continue reading
