The Evolution of the Sri Lankan Mind: The Life and Work of Martin Wickramasinghe (1890–1976)
Key information
- Date
- Time
-
12:00 pm to 1:30 pm
- Venue
- Online
- Event type
- Webinar
About this event
'We speak of Eastern and Western culture. But if we analyse this concept against a background of anthropology, we shall not be able to find many elements of culture that can be definitely pointed out as peculiar to Western culture and foreign to us.' (Martin Wickramasinghe, Cultural Synthesis)
Author, journalist, critic, and contrarian, Martin Wickramasinghe (1890–1976) was one of Sri Lanka’s most renowned writers. His work includes 13 novels, eight short story collections, and more than 20 collections of cultural and literary criticism. Through his writings, he emerged as the foremost public intellectual of his time in Sri Lanka, introducing local readers to subjects such as anthropology, sociology, and linguistics.
In this talk, Uditha Devapriya will present an overview of Wickramasinghe’s life and work in the context of cultural modernism in South Asia. The presentation draws on Devapriya’s research on Wickramasinghe, including his contribution to South Asian art, culture, and society. Wickramasinghe travelled widely, including to India, the UK, France, Russia, and Cuba, and maintained links with foreign scholars, including the Cambridge biochemist and Sinologist Joseph Needham. The talk will cover these aspects as well.
About the speaker
Uditha Devapriya is a researcher, author, columnist, and analyst from Sri Lanka whose work spans international relations, history, culture, anthropology, and politics. He holds an LL.B. from the University of London and a postgraduate diploma in international relations from the Bandaranaike Centre for International Studies.
From 2022 to 2025, Uditha worked as the Chief International Relations Analyst at Factum, a foreign policy think tank in Colombo. He has been published, featured, or interviewed in outlets like Scroll India, The Diplomat, Al-Jazeera, and the BBC.
Since 2023, Uditha has authored several books on Sri Lankan figures and institutions. These include Uplifting Legal Education in Sri Lanka: 150 Years of Law College (2024), on one of Asia’s oldest professional establishments. He is now working on a study of the renowned Sri Lankan novelist and critic Martin Wickramasinghe (1890–1976).
In 2021, he served as research coordinator for a study of the Sri Lankan modernist painter George Keyt (George Keyt: The Absence of a Desired Image, SinhaRaja Tammita-Delgoda), published in 2024. That year, he was lead researcher for the Pulitzer Center-funded documentary Democracy in Debt: Sri Lanka Beyond the Headlines, which was screened across Asia, the US, and at the Bloomsbury Institute in the UK.
In 2025 he was a Resident Fellow at the Kautilya School of Public Policy in Hyderabad, India. There he gave a series of presentations, and interacted with students and academics, bringing Sri Lankan perspectives on art, culture, politics, and geopolitics.
Uditha likes movies, books, and travelling. He enjoys meeting and studying people.
