My first monograph, Religion, Gender, and Politics in Medieval Sri Lanka: The Reconstruction of Buddhist Kingship, ca. 1070-1215, is now available open access, thanks to the generous support of the Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation. This book offers a radical reconsideration of the Poḷonnaruva period, long understood to be a turning point in the history of Theravāda Buddhism. Histories of this period have been overwhelmingly based on a series of literary accounts written long after the fact. But by drawing on textual, inscriptional, numismatic, and material evidence from within the period itself, the book reveals how the intellectual and social histories of Buddhism, politics, and gender were inextricably intertwined in Poḷonnaruva. In particular, it argues that debates over what it meant to be a “good Buddhist king” were intrinsically debates about Buddhist masculinity and about the proper relationship of gender to power.
Further open access, peer-reviewed publications include:
- “Donative Inscriptions of Three Lankan Noblewomen,” Hualin International Journal of Buddhist Studies 8:2 (2026),
- “Buddhist Poetics in Medieval Sri Lanka: The Muvadevdāvata Reconsidered,” Pacific World series 4, 6 (2025), 19–50.
- “Beyond the masculinity of kingship: The making of a modern queen in early second millennium Sri Lanka,” Modern Asian Studies 58:2 (2024), 485–511.
- “Towards an Intellectual History of Cakravartin Kingship,” Journal of South Asian Intellectual History 9 (2024), 185–214.
Non-peer-reviewed scholarly work includes a thematic overview of “Gender” in the Bloomsbury Encyclopaedia of the Global Middle Ages and “Women’s Writing in Medieval Sri Lanka” in the Palgrave Encyclopaedia of Medieval Women’s Writing (forthcoming). I’ve also been privileged to review some excellent academic books by Neena Mahadev; François Tainturier; the venerable Anālayo thero; and my sadly departed friend Michael Jerryson.
In addition to my academic writing, I’m passionate about connecting with a broader audience in clear, plain English. I mainly write about contemporary political, economic and cultural issues in South and South-East Asia, drawing on my background in political science, my experience in the public service and my current studies. I’ve written on Sri Lanka’s twelfth-century female sovereigns, contemporary anti-Islamic sentiments and on reciprocal cycles of increasing extremism. Oddly enough, my most cited piece is still a student essay I wrote on economic development in East Asia.
