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Rapti Siriwardane

I´m an anthropologist, writer, and lecturer based at the University of Bonn (BCDSS), and the German Institute of Development and Sustainability (IDOS). I broadly work on nature-society relations across marine, coastal, and urban contexts impacted by colonial histories and socio-environmental risks. For the most part, I grew up in maritime port cities – Abu Dhabi, Colombo, and Singapore. I received my graduate training at the Universities of Oxford and Bonn, while remaining close to my roots in the anthropology of Southeast Asia, theatre studies, and Anglophone literature (NUS, Singapore). I also possess a postgraduate diploma in counselling and social work practice (Bamberg), through which I independently work with early career scholars within the ambit of Humanizing Academia. Relational, non-dualist approaches inspire my ethnographic work, while integrating methods across oral history, critical pedagogy, decolonial and folkloric praxes. As an ethnographer, my community-based engagements span several interrelated fields: speculative urban design and sea level change adaptation (Manila, Java, South Kalimantan, and Singapore); postwar mobilities and small-scale fisheries (Sri Lanka); marine conservation and non-native species governance (the east Caribbean), alongside gendered subjectivities in back-to-the-land movements (southern England).