Gayathri Embuldeniya
I am a cultural anthropologist with cross disciplinary interests that extend to history and human geography. I am interested in the affective and sociopolitical implications of deterritorialized nation-making in transnational contexts. Focusing on Sri Lankan Tamils in Toronto, Canada, I have examined how immigrants remember and reproduce real and imagined places from their homeland, how this work transforms temporally – both intergenerationally and in relation to socio-political changes – and its impacts on subjectivity, memory, belonging, and citizenship. I am currently working on an aspect of this project that relates to the challenge of strategically translating pain and suffering for the benefit of a wider audience that do not share it, while also accommodating plural voices. I am also developing a new research project related to the scope for the understanding of cultural and political difference in diaspora between ethnic groups with a history of inter-ethnic conflict in their homeland, and between these groups and their receiving state.
I have recently been involved in a CIHR-funded meta-ethnography that developed a conceptual model explaining the perceived impact and experience of participating in peer support interventions for individuals with chronic disease.
Contact Information: gembuldeniya@uchicago.edu5730 S. Woodlawn Ave. # 200,
Chicago, IL 60637
Tel: 773-702-3971
Courses
Producing home: The re-making of place and space in diaspora; Deterritorialized nationalism and the cultural politics of belongingEducation
PhD University of California, Santa Barbara, 2011 (Anthropology)
MA University of California, Santa Barbara 2005 (Anthropology)
MA University of Oxford, 2005 (English Language and Literature)
