Preserving Sri Lanka's Feminist History: The Kumari Jayawardena Archive

Social Scientists' Association of Sri Lanka (SSA), in collaboration with RLS South Asia, is establishing the Kumari Jayawardena Left Feminist Archive — an open-access digital resource centre for students, researchers, activists, policymakers and artists working on feminist thought and social justice in Sri Lanka and the wider region.

There is currently no digital feminist archive in Sri Lanka. Decades of feminist scholarship, movement materials and legal and policy documentation remain scattered, offline or at risk of being lost. In a context of rising fundamentalism and the erosion of left and feminist histories, the need to preserve and make accessible this record is urgent.

The archive is named after Kumari Jayawardena, Sri Lanka's foremost feminist historian, whose work on feminism, nationalism, labour, peasant movements and ethnic identity has shaped feminist scholarship across the Global South. Her 1986 book Feminism and Nationalism in the Third World is recognised as one of the most significant feminist texts of the twentieth century. The archive will be launched on her 95th birthday in June 2026.

The 2026 project covers two phases. The first focuses on digitising and cataloguing materials related to Jayawardena's life and work and launching a well-designed, open-access website. The second expands the archive to include left feminist material from and around the 2022 Aragalaya, as well as laws, policies, court judgements, political party manifestos and CEDAW reports relating to women's, gender and LGBTQI rights in Sri Lanka dating back to the 1970s. Up to six scholars, activists and artists will also be invited to engage with the archive and produce new work, culminating in a seminar and publication.