SWEDISH SOUTH ASIAN STUDIES NETWORK

---

Meeting at the University of Sri Jayewardenepura (SJP), Sri Lanka, 1 March 2002:

Meeting hosted by Prof. Marcus Karunanayake, Dept. of Geography

We first met the Vice-Chancellor, Prof. J. W. Wickramasinghe, the faculty deans and a limited number of senior professors for half an hour. We briefly presented SASNET’s goals and the Internet gateway to them. Among the 10 persons present was D.A. Tantrigoda, Prof of Physics and Dean of Faculty of Graduate studies.

Then more people came in, totally about 40 persons, most of them lecturers and associate professors. We gave a slightly longer presentation of SASNET and then invited questions and viewpoints.

There were a few questions relating to the various programmes available to Swedish researchers and teachers for exchange like the Linnaeus Palme programme. Swedish medical students (from Uppsala University) had come to the SJP university for a study visit, and at SJP they are now eager to get a possibility of making a reciprocal visit to Uppsala with a group of students. One of the lecturers, Dr. Kumudu Wijewardena (photo to the left) is regularly going to Uppsala to teach a graduate course in the Department of Women's and Children's Health. led by Gunilla Lindmark, Professor of International Maternal and Reproductive Health. Dr Wijewardena is also working in a project on child labour. She said the the Uppsala institute had applied for a Linnaeus Palme exchange programme but failed to get it.

There was a question about the possibility to study indigenous medical knowledge and we answered that SASNET could help if there are counterparts in Sweden interested in studying this. Other topics suggested for research and education were biotechnology, infectious diseases, and the training of health care workers on different levels. There was also a plan to set up a centre for the study of infectious diseases.

Prof Y A D S Wanasinghe, Prof Marcus Karunanayake, and Lars Eklund, at the Dept of Geography

After this, we went with Marcus Karunanayake to the dept. of Geography and had a look at their equipment for GIS work. They have an impressive collection of new computers and other machines necessary for this work.

Together with his colleagues, Prof. M. D. C. Abhayaratna and Prof. Y.A.D.S. Wanasinghe, Marcus presented their Sida financed research programme on “Regional Imbalances and Poverty Alleviation.” This is done in collaboration with Claes Lindberg from the dept of Social and Economic Geography at Uppsala University (he is acting as the co-ordinator) and Sune Berger from the dept for Geography and Tourism at Karlstad University.

Prof. Lennart Strömquist, from the Dept of Earth Sciences, Uppsala University, is also involved in the programme. It was started in 1997 when Tomas Kjellqvist and later Dr. Per Einar Tröften were working with this programme at SAREC. They aim at producing 6 PhD students in this programme, and a total of ca 45 MSc students (in Human security) on the six years programme (1997-2002), and are also now applying for further funding for a new three years programme. They are also pursuing a programme on South-South co-operation, with among others, Chiang Mai University in Thailand.

We promised to push for publishing more information on the Swedish sponsored research programme on the Internet.

Later on we met for a dinner sponsored by Marcus Karunanayake and his department. Then we learnt that there are now 14 universities in Sri Lanka with 40 000 students, and an additional number of just as many students studying abroad.

In addition to this there are at present also about 20 000 students in the Open University.
Prof. Wilson (Economics, and Consultant, Higher Education Reforms, University Grants Commission, UGC), prof. M. D. C. Abhayaratna, and prof. D.A. Tantrigoda also participated. We talked about the background of the ethnic conflict in the country, and the university´s long-standing contacts in Sweden. They include several visits to Sweden, etc. Marcus and prof. Abhayaratna are going to Karlstad for a conference in June 2002, and may also come to Lund for a visit to SASNET.