The Department of Sociology will be organizing the 2nd Seminar for the month of August, of the Department Seminar Series on 17th of August 2017 at 10.00 am in the Seminar Room of the Department of Sociology. At this seminar, Samson Keam, Catherine West and Ben Vecchiet will be presenting on “Religious Innovation and Social Reform in Sri Lanka: 3 Perspectives from the Field.”
Samson Keam is a PhD student at Deakin University, Australia, and his research seeks to explore people’s relationship to the environment, social relations and religious practice and philosophy in the post-conflict setting of Sri Lanka. His fieldwork takes up these issues through investigating the relationship between water management, Sinhalese Buddhism and the social formation of Polonnaruwa District, Sri Lanka. Catherine West a PhD student in Anthropology from Deakin University is working on her research thesis, entitled ‘Urban Religion in Colombo,’ which aims to understand the relationship between the urban environment, the social formation and religious experience, using ethnographic and geographic data on a small section of the Narahenpita area of Colombo. Ben Vecchiet is also a PhD student at Deakin University, Australia, and his research is concerned with the ethnographic study of post conflict religious ritual, in particular pilgrimage, and social formation in the northern and eastern districts of Sri Lanka.
