Sri Lanka’s Indigenous Vedda community, also known as Vanniyalaththo, has profound relationships with nature that are not recognized by the country’s colonial history and, subsequently, its Western-influenced legal framework. This article explores how the gap between relational Vedda laws and state-based law in Sri Lanka can be bridged. It suggests that the emerging paradigms of legal personhood and Rights of Nature, which acknowledge the more-than-instrumental values of nature, can serve as a starting point for bridging this gap. By exploring the relational ontologies of Vedda law, this article advocates broader recognition of Vedda worldviews within the existing state-based law in Sri Lanka and highlights the role of Indigenous communities as non-state actors in shaping more-than-human governance.

Sri Lanka is immersed in the ideology of Buddhist primacy: “the island belongs to its Sinhala Buddhists, and Buddhism should dominate the state.” Why does this ideology attract? The standard answer is that it justifies the power of the Sinhala Buddhist ethnic group. This article offers a different take through two contestations of modernity. It draws from Sabhyatva Rajya Kara or Towards a Civilisation-State by the Sinhala public intellectual Gunadasa Amarasekara, and the work of post-secular thinkers such as Jurgen Habermas, Charles Taylor, and Nicholas Wolterstorff, and argues that, along with power, Buddhist primacy attracts because it offers an invitation to join a dignifying, heroic narrative, and a vision of “fullness.” That is, there is more to Buddhist primacy than power. This points to the need for a richer human anthropology, and a fuller account of religion, in studies of religion and constitutions.

The fourteenth century Indian Ocean world saw a rapid increase in seaborne trade, which led to developing port cities and new centres of power. These port cities sometimes became the capitals of emergent states which broke away from the traditional pattern of landed states and established their own spheres of influence over land-and-sea realms. One such emergent state was the polity centred on Raigama and Kotte in southwestern Sri Lanka, which gained prominence in the region thanks to the port policies followed by its rulers, the Alakeshwara family. This research analyses the rise of this state in the context of the Indian Ocean custom of the ‘right of the port,’ which allowed merchant groups like the Alakeshwaras to establish taxation and sovereignty over an area. This also presents an alternative perspective from which the politics of the kingdoms of Sri Lanka can be reframed and understood, breaking away from the internal logic of ceremonial succession and historical inevitability.

Fisheries industry plays a crucial role in addressing food and nutrition security challenges in developing countries. This study examines the dynamics of price pass-through along the spatial markets in Sri Lanka. Findings reveal that Colombo and Kandy markets are the main driver of price pass-through due to their strategic locations and advanced infrastructure. We further identify that one standard deviation positive price shock in Colombo and Kandy markets has an immediate significant impact on other regional markets. Policies related to improving transportation and cold storage facilities can help to reduce reliance on central markets for nationwide distribution.

The mental health of Sri Lankan adolescents is of growing concern, given the decades of internal conflict and socio-political instability in Sri Lanka. This aims were to examine the prevalence and determinants of symptoms of common mental health problems (MHP) experienced by school-going adolescents in Sri Lanka. A cross-sectional survey was conducted among school-going adolescents in grades 10–12/13 from seven schools in Gampaha District, Sri Lanka. Depressive/psychological distress symptoms measured using the PHQ-9 /K10, were analysed using mean scale scoring. Psychosocial determinants were measured using JVQ/PBI/AESI/study-specific questions. Associations between MHPs and psychosocial determinants were examined using multiple linear regression models. 24.11% of 1,045 adolescents who completed the surveys reported clinically significant symptoms of depression, and 60.10% reported psychological distress. Higher age, being female, lesser physical activity, smoking, daily social media use, violent victimisation, not living with both birth parents, having ≥2 siblings, low maternal/paternal education, having an overprotective paternal figure, increased academic stress and rural living were associated with higher MHPs. We identified a high prevalence of MHPs among Sri Lankan adolescents, which was multifactorially determined. Modifiable risk factors addressed through public health policies, research and programmes, as well as less-modifiable risk factors addressed through national-level policy changes, are all essential to addressing mental health burdens in this population.

Continent formation and its stabilization are key factors for understanding tectonic processes and histories across geologic time. Sri Lanka consists of a Central Highland (HC) granulite/UHT terrane bounded by tectonic sutures and medium-to-high-grade magmatic arc terranes likely formed via Neoproterozoic double-sided subduction and collision associated with assembly of Gondwana. EMP Chemical Th-U-Pb dating of monazite within the eastern suture is dominated by 595–635 Ma dates, consistent with juxtaposition ca. 600 Ma as arc magmatism ended. Chemical analysis of metamorphic monazite dates from the eastern HC indicates prograde HT metamorphism (M1) at ca. 570 Ma during garnet growth (lower Y monazite) and retrograde HT metamorphism (M2) at ca. 560–550 Ma (higher Y monazite). These ages reflect orogenic thickening associated with arc collisions (M1) and retrograde metamorphism (M2) during deep-crustal exhumation of HC rocks. Regional long duration (>50–100 Ma) HT metamorphism, which continued until 520 Ma, and possibly to ca. 480 Ma, was followed shortly by rapid early Ordovician (480–490 Ma) lower to mid-crustal cooling based on near concordant 40Ar-39Ar hornblende and biotite ages. Rapid cooling occurred concurrently with metasomatism (He et al. 2016), and region-wide exhumation during orogenic collapse documented in adjacent portions of Gondwana. The cessation of long-duration HT metamorphism linked to the onset of rapid Ordovician intermediate-temperature (>500–<300 °C) cooling and exhumation via orogenic collapse resulted in young stabilized continental crust. The Neoproterozoic-Early Palaeozoic metamorphic/thermal evolution of Sri Lanka (and correlated regions) within Gondwana attests to the timing and process of rapid stabilization of central Gondwanaland.

Drawing inspiration from Ian Hacking's claim that new modes of description generate new possibilities for action, this essay explores the impact of changes to the mode of description through the 1901 Census in Ceylon. It begins by exploring the modes of description used in the censuses prior to 1901 to demonstrate that in Ceylon, the census was yet to emerge as the critical tool of colonial governance claimed by dominant scholarship around colonial census taking. This leads to an exploration of how the changes that Sir Ponnambalam Arunachalam, the first Ceylonese Census superintendent, made to the Census Ordinance, Census Manual, and Census Report impacted the function of the census as a mode of description. It then explores the possibilities for action generated by these changes in the mode of description, paying particular attention to the ways in which the census shaped elite, indigenous activism leading to the first major reforms of the colonial governance structure in Ceylon, including the introduction of limited franchise. Thus, Ceylon's 1901 Census affords a unique opportunity to examine the impact that shifts in modes of description have on possibilities for action.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly being integrated into sentencing within the criminal justice system. This research examines the impact of AI on sentencing, addressing the challenges and opportunities for fairness and justice. The main problem explored is AI’s potential to perpetuate biases, undermining fair-trial principles. This study intends to assess AI’s influence on sentencing, identify legal and ethical challenges, and propose a framework for equitable AI use in judicial decisions. Key research questions include: (1) How does AI influence sentencing decisions? (2) What concerns arise from AI in sentencing? (3) What safeguards can mitigate those concerns and prejudices? Utilizing qualitative methodology, including doctrinal analysis and comparative studies, the research reveals AI’s potential to enhance sentencing efficiency but also to risk reinforcing biases. The study recommends robust regulatory frameworks, transparency in AI algorithms, and judicial oversight to ensure AI supports justice rather than impedes it, advocating for a balanced integration that prioritizes human rights and fairness.

This article considers the ways in which the material infrastructures of China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) intersect with other infrastructural formations, and how the resulting overlaps can trigger processes of what I call ‘infrastructural splintering’. These processes cause infrastructure to be experienced in differentiating ways, creating divisive politics where once there might have been unity. Embracing these politics as an analytical starting point undermines the techno-material stability of the BRI and reveals its more-than-material affects. I illustrate these ideas by developing a case study of the impacts of the China-backed Colombo Port City project on Catholic fishing communities that are dependent upon the aquatic commons for survival. The construction of the Port City has brought about significant aquatic pollution and ecosystem destruction, and public erasure by Colombo’s political elites. Complicating matters is the dominance of the Catholic Church in Sri Lanka’s littoral spaces, which has become divided by a universalist politico-ecological consciousness imposed by the Vatican, a corruptible local hierarchy, and environmental activists who engage communities via the Church’s sacred infrastructures. By working through these processes of infrastructural splintering, I consider how the BRI has caused Sri Lanka’s littoral spaces to face increasingly fractious futures.

Modern historians have repeatedly cast Sri Lanka’s historical female monarchs as ‘queens’, without critically reflecting on the conceptual limits and nuances of that term. Through a close examination of sources from the early second millennium, and their reception by scholars from the colonial period onwards, I demonstrate that Sri Lanka’s female monarchs—particularly Līlāvatī of Poḷonnaruva (r. 1197–1200, 1209, and 1210)—engaged in a more creative and subversive performance of gender than modern ‘queenship’ allows. In particular, I argue, a discourse of kingship’s inherent masculinity, advanced in literary and didactic texts written primarily by male monastics, was too-willingly accepted by colonial-period scholars. Closer attention to the material evidence of Līlāvatī’s reign, however, challenges this discourse and further suggests a politics of gender beyond the binary.