Arjuna Parakrama, a world leader in human rights issues and visiting professor at the University of Peradeniya in Sri Lanka, will deliver a University Lecture as guest speaker during the Cornell conference "Sri Lanka: Dynamics of Violence, Challenges of Peace."
Parakrama's talk, "Accounting for Peace as Violence by Another Name? Heretical Thoughts From the Margins of the Sri Lankan Conference," will be Friday, Feb. 7, at 12:15 p.m. in 157 E. Sibley Hall.
Parakrama's keynote speech kicks off the two-day conference, Feb. 7-8. Following Parakrama's talk, the conference moves to 401 Warren Hall at 3 p.m. The conference continues Saturday, Feb. 8, at 8:45 a.m., also in 401 Warren, and continues throughout the day. The talk and the conference are free and open to the public.
Parakrama also is the Sri Lankan Country Representative to Oxfam Community Aid Abroad. The lecture, as well as the conference, are sponsored by the South Asia Program at Cornell, with support from the Office of the University Faculty, among other campus groups. These events coincide with the one-year anniversary of the cease-fire agreement between the government of Sri Lanka and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.
In Sri Lanka, Parakrama has worked with individuals and entire village communities displaced by the war in Sri Lanka. Together with nongovernmental organizations and grassroots activists, Parakrama developed an innovative training program to assist in fieldwork with remote, war-torn communities in Sri Lanka. Parakrama's academic work focuses on identity formation in border-village communities. With funding from the Guggenheim Foundation, he is working on a project titled "Saturated With Loss: The Bereaved Sexualities of Sri Lanka's Prolonged War."
Parakrama is a senior consultant at the Centre for Policy Alternatives in Sri Lanka, where he helped document pre-and post-election violence.
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