Dr. Rapti Siriwardane-de Zoysa

My ethnographic work integrates methods from maritime anthropology, cultural geography, and the environmental humanities in studying contemporary nature-society relations.

Geographically, my focus lies in archipelagic Southeast Asia, the Netherlands, and Sri Lanka, with connective currents across the Dutch Caribbean. This work is reflected in past book projects Fishing, Mobility, and Settlerhood: Coastal Socialities in Postwar Sri Lanka (2018), and two co-edited volumes Coastal Urbanities: Mobilities, Meanings, Manoeuvrings (2022), and An Anthology of Non-conformism: Rebel Wom!n Words, Ways and Wonders (2024).

My present focus at the BCDSS and IDOS broadly examines the fraught cultural histories and politics of infrastructural development and littoral placemaking, as witnessed in municipal agendas of modernist climate adaptation in the Indo-Malay-Philippine archipelago. This work builds on seven years of postdoctoral research within the two-phased DFG Priority Programme “Regional Sea Level Change & Society” (SPP 1889).  

I am particularly interested in tracing localised understandings on ecological servitude (vis-à-vis their multispecies entanglements), that undergird expert-led, neoliberal adaptation paradigms such as nature-based solutions and other forms of ecosystem services thinking. To this end, I retain my focus on asymmetric knowledge dependencies that are produced and contested by planners, developers, hydro-technical experts, and community agents – all of whom imagine vastly antithetical urban eco-futures. Moreover, I place as much emphasis on the agency of the more-than-human across differing sites of abandonment and overbuilding. Thus, the palimpsest-like effects of tidal ebbs and flows (along with their life forms), remain a central to my work, illustrating how tidescapes generate their own recalcitrant “anti-archives” in ways that both erase and reveal, haunt and enliven diverse ways of living with water. 

My teaching interests include the anthropology of the environment (including cultures of water), critical development studies, and urban political ecology. These fields complement my longstanding curiosity in critical approaches to grounded theory, oral history, public folkloric praxis, and other ´field´-based mobile, artistic-experimental modes of inquiry/expression including photovoice, transect walking, and the counter-cartographic.  

2011–2015
D.Phil. in Development Anthropology, summa cum laude, University of Bonn, Centre for Development Research (ZEF)

Dissertation: "'Sambandam': Conflict, Cooperation, and Coastal Lifeworlds in Postwar Sri Lanka" (supervisors: Prof. Dr. Conrad Schetter & Prof. Dr. Aram Ziai)

2007–2008
M.Sc. in Human Geography (NSEG), with Distinction, University of Oxford, School of Geography and the Environment

Thesis: "Utopias of Process: Reimagining Gendered Subjectivities among Eco-settlements in Southwest England" (adviser: Prof. Dr. Jaime Lorimer)

2000–2004
B.A. Sociology & Social Anthropology (Honours), with Anglophone Literature & Theatre Studies (2:1), National University of Singapore, Department of Sociology & Anthropology

Honours thesis: "Shifting Terrains: Negotiating Boundaries between the Natural and the Contrived in Singapore's Ecological Narratives" (adviser: Assoc Prof. Dr. Stephanie Karin Rupp)

2015–2023
Postdoctoral Researcher, Leibniz Centre for Tropical Marine Research, Bremen

2019–2020
Visiting lecturer in Maritime Anthropology, Department of Anthropology and Cultural Research, University of Bremen, Winter seminar series

2015–2019  
Guest lecturer in Development Sociology, Department of Sociology (F8), University of Bremen, Winter seminar series (led by Prof. Dr. Anna-Katharina Hornidge)

2015 & 2016, Winter   
Guest lecturer in academic writing, Centre for Development Research (ZEF), University of Bonn, one-day workshop for the ZEFa Doctoral Disciplinary Programme

2011–2015
Junior Researcher (doctoral candidate), Centre for Development Research (ZEF), University of Bonn

2023: "Blue Hauntologies and Spectral Seas," panel convener, Royal Geographical Society Annual Conference, London.

2023: "Between Blue Urbanism and Tanah Air: Urban Experiments, Circulations, and Placemaking as Sea Level Change Adaptation," conference organiser (with Johannes Herbeck), Universitas Indonesia, closing conference, Jakarta.

2021: "The Storied Worlds of Asia's Deltas and Estuaries: Pluralizing the Southern Waterfront," panel co-convenor (with Alin Kadfak), double panel with "From Mud to Monsoon" with V. Chitra & Anthony Medrano, ICAS Conference 12, Kyoto University (online). 

2021: Discussion Keynote in "'Fields' of IR: Epistemic Violence, Real Life Encounters, and Methodologes" (with Millie Lake & David Mwambari), co-organised by the University of Ghent and the Geneva Graduate Institute (online).

2020: "Unlayering the Littoral in Northern Jakarta" (funded paper presentation), Water and the City conference, co-organised by the Asia Research Institute, NUS, Singapore.   

2019: "Islands of Invasion: Of seagrasses, arrivals, and charismatic ecosystems in Bonaire," MARE Conference – People and the Sea X, Amsterdam.

Peer-Reviewed Monographs and Edited Volumes

• 2024. As editor. With Epifania Amoo-Adare. An Anthology of Non-Conformism: Rebel Wom!n Words, Ways and Wonders. New York: DIO Press.
• 2022. As editor. With Kelvin E.Y. Low, Noorman Abdullah, and Anna-Katharina Hornidge. Coastal Urbanities: Mobilities, Meanings, Manoeuvrings. Leiden: Brill. 
• 2018. Fishing, Mobility and Settlerhood: Coastal Socialities in Postwar Sri Lanka. Cham: Springer.

Select Journal Articles  

• 2023. "The Unruly Arts of Ethnographic Refusal: Power, Politics, Performativity." In FENNIA: International Journal of Geography 201(2), 169–182. Open access
• 2021. With T. Schöne, J. Herbeck, J. Illigner, M. Haghighi, S. Simarmata, E. Porio, A. Rovere,  and A.-K. Hornidge. "The 'wickedness' of governing land subsidence: Policy perspectives from urban Southeast."  In PLOS ONE. Open access 
• 2021. "Decolonizing Seascapes: Imaginaries and Absences on an Island Hub." In Postcolonial Interventions 6(1). Open access
• 2020. With J. Herbeck. "Futuring 'Blue Urbanisms': Pluralizing the Littoral in Urban Southeast Asia." In International Sociological Association E-symposium. Online. Open access 
• 2020. "Beyond the Wall: Dyking as an object of everyday governance in the Bay of Manila." In Marine Policy 112. Access
• 2018: With I. Fitrinitia and J. Herbeck. "Watery Incursions: The Securitization of Everyday Flooding in Metro Manila and Coastal Jakarta." In International Quarterly for Asian Studies 49(1–2): 105–126. Open access
• 2016. With A.-K. Hornidge. "Putting Lifewords at Sea: Studying Meaning-making in Marine Research." In Frontiers in Marine Science 8. Open access 

Select Peer-Reviewed Book Chapters 

• 2024. "Following currents: Oceanic and littoral Sri Lanka." In Routledge Handbook of Contemporary Sri Lanka, edited by K. Ruwanpura & A. Saleem. London: Routledge. 
• 2022. With A.-K. Hornidge. "Tidal Turns: Coastal Urbanities in Island Southeast Asia." In Coastal Urbanities: Mobilities, Meanings, Manoeuvrings, edited by R. Siriwardane-de Zoysa, K.E.Y. Low, N. Abdullah, and A.-K. Hornidge. Leiden: Brill. 
• 2022. "Islanded Hauntings: Sri Lanka's Seascape Imaginaries and Mythico-histories of the Insular." In Histories, Myths and Decolonial Interventions: A Planetary Resistance, edited by S. Dey and A. Nirmal. London/Delhi: Routledge.
• 2022. With J. Salleh. "Sanded: Sedimented Pasts and Shored Futures in 'Outer' Singapore." In Coastal Urbanities. Leiden: Brill. 
• 2022. With J. Herbeck. "Transformations of Urban Coastal Nature(s): Meanings and Paradoxes of Nature-Based Solutions for Climate Adaptation in Southeast Asia." In Human-Nature Interactions, edited by I. Misiune, D. Depellegrin, L. Egarter Vigl. Cham: Springer. Open access
• 2021. With E. Amoo- Adare. "The Bi-polar Waterfront: Paradoxes of Shoreline Placemaking in Contemporary Accra and Colombo." In Global [Im]-Possibilities: Exploring the Paradoxes of Just Sustainabilities, edited by P. Godfrey and M. Buchanan. London: Bloomsbury.

Public Scholarship and Book Reviews

• 2023. "Foreword." In Performing Memories and Weaving Archives: Creolized Cultures Across the Indian Ocean, by S. Dey. London: Anthem Press.
• 2022. With A. Sridhar, A. Jalais, and A. S. Anantha. "The Indian Ocean Southern Collective: A Collaboratory for Postnormal Coastal Knowledge Production." In Items: Insights from the Social Sciences. Social Science Research Council. New York. Online. Open access
• 2021. "King, T. and G. Robinson (eds.) At Home and the Waves: Human Habitation of the Sea from the Mesolithic to Today. Studies in Environmental Anthropology and Ethnobiology 24. New York: Berghahn Books, 2019." Book review in Anthropos.
• 2021. With I. Fitriana. "Opto-Haptic Fieldwork Encounters in Pandemic Southeast Asia." Special Issue – A Collaboratory of Indian Ocean Ethnographies, edited by A. Jalais and A. Sridhar. In Fieldsights, Society for Cultural Anthropology. Online. Open access

Artistic Collaborations, Co-Curated Exhibitions, and Pedagogical Tool Development

• 2024. With A. Jalais, A. Sridhar et al. "The Sea Lexicon" (ongoing). Funded by the SSRC Transregional Collaboratory for the Indian Ocean (2020–2024).
• 2024. With P. Kærgaard Anderson, S. Dey, and D. Borovsky. "Reverberations Counter-Atlas" (ongoing). Funded by the SSRC Transregional Collaboratory for the Indian Ocean (2023–2024).
• 2022/2023. "Contested Coastal Worlds – Care and Conviviality in Coastal Life." Photovoice exhibition co-organised with J. Herbeck (in partnership with Mercy Corps, Indonesia, Dakshin Foundation, India; Mangrove Maniacs, Bonaire; Mingas por el Mare, Ecuador and the Bremen Dyke Association), at the Haus der Wissenschaft, Bremen, Germany (Nov 2022 – Feb 2023).
• 2021. Tidal Cities – A Visualisation Game. Co-developed with J. Herbeck, together with landscape architects and artists A. J. Bimbao and D. Rathod. Funded by the DFG SPP 1889 initiative.
• 2018: "Storying Sea Level Change in Island Southeast Asia." Photographic exhibition, co-organised with J. Herbeck and collaborators at Universitas Indonesia. Ci:Kini Gallery, September 2018, Jakarta.