Dr. Nalika Gajaweera is a research anthropologist at the Center for Religiona and Civic Culture and the University of Southern California. Her research interests are the anthropology of religion, especially the intersections of Buddhism, race, ethno-nationalism and gender. She has mainly carried out research in Sri Lanka and the United States. Currently she explores the struggles, experiences and practices of ethnoc and racial minority leadership within North-American meditation-based insight institutions, and their efforts to confront issues of racism and whiteness within these institutiones. Her previous work looked at how Buddhist ethics and practices of giving shaped Sri Lankan NGOs doing humanitarianism work in the context of the Indian Ocean tsunami (2004) and ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka (-2009). Nalika is also consulting international aid agencies on issues of Buddhism, ethno-religious violence and religious pluralism in Sri Lanka.

The seminar is co-organised by the Department of Social Anthropology and Stockholm Center for Global Asia, Stockholm University.