Features

Commercialising research in Sri Lanka – not really the healthiest thing for research

Published

1 year ago

2025/05/13

Image credit University of Sydney

In the early 2000s, a colleague, returning to Sri Lanka after a decade in a research-heavy first world university, complained to me that ‘there is no research culture in Sri Lanka’. But what exactly does having a ‘research culture’ mean? Is a lot of funding enough? What else has stopped us from working towards a productive and meaningful research culture? A concerted effort has been made to improve the research culture of state universities, though there are debates about how healthy such practices are (there is not much consideration of the same in private ‘universities’ in Sri Lanka but that is a discussion for another time). So, in the 25 years since my colleague bemoaned our situation, what has been happening?

What is a ‘research culture’?

A good research culture would be one where we – academics and students – have the resources to engage productively in research. This would mean infrastructure, training, wholesome mentoring, and that abstract thing called headspace. In a previous Kuppi column, I explained at length some of the issues we face as researchers in Sri Lankan universities, including outdated administrative regulations, poor financial resources, and such aspects. My perspective is from the social sciences, and might be different to other disciplines. Still, I feel that there are at least a few major problems that we all face.

Number one: Money is important.

Take the example American universities. Harvard University, according to Harvard Magazine, “received $686.5 million in federally sponsored research grants” for the fiscal year of 2024 but suddenly find themselves in a bind because of such funds being held back. Research funds in these universities typically goes towards building and maintenance of research labs and institutions, costs of equipment, material and other resources and stipends for graduate and other research assistants, conferences, etc. Without such an infusion of money towards research, the USA would not have been able to attracts (and keeps) the talent and brains of other countries. Without a large amount of money dedicated for research, Sri Lankan state universities, too, will not have the research culture it yearns for. Given the country’s austere economic situation, in the last several years, research funds have come mainly from self-generated funds and treasury funds. Yet, even when research funds are available (they are usually inadequate), we still have some additional problems.

Number two: Unending spools of red tape

In Sri Lankan universities red tape is endless. An MoU with a foreign research institution takes at least a year. Financial regulations surrounding the award and spending of research grants is frustrating.

Here’s a personal anecdote. In 2018, I applied for a small research grant from my university. Several months later, I was told I had been awarded it. It comes to me in installments of not more than Rs 100,000. To receive this installment, I must submit a voucher and wait a few weeks until it passes through various offices and gains various approvals. For mysterious financial reasons, asking for reimbursements is discouraged. Obviously then, if I were working on a time-sensitive study or if I needed a larger amount of money for equipment or research material, I would not be able to use this grant. MY research assistants, transcribers, etc., must be willing to wait for their payments until I receive this advance. In 2022, when I received a second advance, the red tape was even tighter. I was asked to spend the funds and settle accounts – within three weeks. ‘Should I ask my research assistants to do the work and wait a few weeks or months for payment? Or should I ask them not to do work until I get the advance and then finish it within three weeks so I can settle this advance?’ I asked in frustration.

Colleagues, who regularly use university grants, frustratedly go along with it; others may opt to work with organisations outside the university. At a university meeting, a few years ago, set up specifically to discuss how young researchers could be encouraged to do research, a group of senior researchers ended the meeting with a list of administrative and financial problems that need to be resolved if we want to foster ‘a research culture’. These are still unresolved. Here is where academic unions can intervene, though they seem to be more focused on salaries, permits and school quotas. If research is part of an academic’s role and responsibility, a research-friendly academic environment is not a privilege, but a labour issue and also impinges on academic freedom to generate new knowledge.

Number three: Instrumentalist research – a global epidemic

The quality of research is a growing concern, in Sri Lanka and globally. The competitiveness of the global research environment has produced seriously problematic phenomena, such as siphoning funding to ‘trendy’ topics, the predatory publications, predatory conferences, journal paper mills, publications with fake data, etc. Plagiarism, ghost writing and the unethical use of AI products are additional contemporary problems. In Sri Lanka, too, we can observe researchers publishing very fast – doing short studies, trying to publish quickly by sending articles to predatory journals, sending the same article to multiple journals at the same time, etc. Universities want more conferences rather than better conferences. Many universities in Sri Lanka have mandated that their doctoral candidates must publish journal articles before their thesis submission. As a consequence, novice researchers frequently fall prey to predatory journals. Universities have also encouraged faculties or departments to establish journals, which frequently have sub-par peer review.

Alongside this are short-sighted institutional changes. University Business Liankage cells, for instance, were established as part of the last World Bank loan cycle to universities. They are expected to help ‘commercialise’ research and focuses on research that can produce patents, and things that can be sold. Such narrow vision means that the broad swathe of research that is undertaken in universities are unseen and ignored, especially in the humanities and social sciences. A much larger vision could have undertaken the promotion of research rather than commercialisation of it, which can then extend to other types of research.

This brings us to the issue of what types of research is seen as ‘relevant’ or ‘useful’. This is a question that has significant repercussions. In one sense, research is an elitist endeavour. We assume that the public should trust us that public funds assigned for research will be spent on worth-while projects. Yet, not all research has an outcome that shows its worth or timeliness in the short term. Some research may not be understood other than by specialists. Therefore, funds, or time spent on some research projects, are not valued, and might seem a waste, or a privilege, until and unless a need for that knowledge suddenly arises.

A short example suffices. Since the 1970s, research on the structures of Sinhala and Sri Lankan Tamil languages (sound patterns, sentence structures of the spoken versions, etc.) have been nearly at a standstill. The interest in these topics are less, and expertise in these areas were not prioritised in the last 30 years. After all, it is not an area that can produce lucrative patents or obvious contributions to the nation’s development. But with digital technology and AI upon us, the need for systematic knowledge of these languages is sorely evident – digital technologies must be able to work in local languages to become useful to whole populations. Without a knowledge of the structures and sounds of local languages – especially the spoken varieties – people who cannot use English cannot use those devices and platforms. While providing impetus to research such structures, this need also validates utilitarian research.

This then is the problem with espousing instrumental ideologies of research. World Bank policies encourage a tying up between research and the country’s development goals. However, in a country like ours, where state policies are tied to election manifestos, the result is a set of research outputs that are tied to election cycles. If in 2019, the priority was national security, in 2025, it can be ‘Clean Sri Lanka’. Prioritising research linked to short-sighted visions of national development gains us little in the longer-term. At the same time, applying for competitive research grants internationally, which may have research agendas that are not nationally relevant, is problematic. These are issues of research ethics as well.

Concluding thoughts

In moving towards a ‘good research culture’, Sri Lankan state universities have fallen into the trap of adopting some of the problematic trends that have swept through the first world. Yet, since we are behind the times anyway, it is possible for us to see the damaging consequences of those issues, and to adopt the more fruitful processes. A slower, considerate approach to research priorities would be useful for Sri Lanka at this point. It is also a time for collective action to build a better research environment, looking at new relationships and collaborations, and mentoring in caring ways.

(Dr. Kaushalya Perera teaches at the Department of English, University of Colombo)

Kuppi is a politics and pedagogy happening on the margins of the lecture hall that parodies, subverts, and simultaneously reaffirms social hierarchies.

By Kaushalya Perera

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Features

‘The devil is in the details’ in West Asian peace

Published

16 hours ago

2026/06/18

Sahan Weerasooriya

President Donald Trump at the current G7 summit in France. Evelyn Hockstein/Getty Image

It is obviously too early for an outpouring of joy over the seeming cessation of hostilities between the main antagonists in West Asia. While the prospect of there being a measure of calm in the region is being welcomed by considerable sections of the international community, what is ‘on the table’ currently is only a Memorandum of Understanding between the US and Iran to give peace a chance. The hard part in the peace effort remains to be achieved.

In the Middle East of today we have one of the most complex conflicts to break out in modern international politics and the observer would be naive in the extreme to expect a facile and early closure to the tangle. Yet, for the sake of the world’s publics who have been hurting badly in the prolonged hostilities one could only hope that the US-Iran MoU that is expected to be signed by the sides on Friday would lead eventually to a substantive peace. The world’s thanks are due to Pakistan in this connection for its sustained support in the peace drive.

While the sides have agreed to a ceasing of hostilities in the most general terms and have reached accord on the facilitation of uninterrupted oil and gas supplies to the rest of the world, for instance, the ‘devil will prove to be in the details’ in an envisaged comprehensive peace settlement. It is these details that would make or break peace if the negotiations go on in earnest.

Nevertheless, the details would need to be worked out consensually in a spirit of compromise with an eye to the greater good of the world community. Realpolitik or a narrow focus on solely the national interest among the protagonists, for example, would need to give way to a measure of humanity that would encompass within it a consideration of the overall well being of the world. In other words, it is statesmanship that would crucially matter.

The next few weeks would establish whether humanists are ‘asking for far too much’ when they broach the questions at issue in these terms. Yet it is essentially self interest and national security considerations of the first importance that drove the conflict from even prior to February this year and these questions would need to be taken up and resolved to the satisfaction of the US and Iran in the main if some headway is to be made towards a durable settlement.

The nuclear issue would prove to be the proverbial Gordian Knot. From a realistic viewpoint, Iran could not be expected to be without a potential nuclear deterrent in the face of perceived nuclear threats emanating for it from the West and Israel. In the short term, Iran would need to possess this deterrent to a measure, within a mutually agreed international legal framework maybe, until wide agreement is reached on the nuclear tangle. Specifically, Iran’s immediate threat perceptions with regard to her nuclear-powered rivals would need to be defused during initial negotiations.

Ideally it is a world free of nuclear weapons that must be aimed at but since this goal cannot be achieved in the near or medium terms, unfolding negotiations would need to ensure Iran’s absolute security in a world of powers that continue to swear by the nuclear deterrent, if it is to give up the suspected latter capability.

However, it is to the degree to which the present nuclear powers divest themselves of this capability that Iran could be put at ease on this score. Accordingly, it is nothing short of a complete elimination of nuclear weapons from the world that could dissuade keenly security conscious states from developing nuclear weapons of their own with a mass destruction capability.

This is the number one dilemma the international community needs to grapple with going forward and it is to the extent to which it resolves it that a nuclear weapons free world could be envisaged. No doubt, an uphill challenge.

Compelling Israel to support the present negotiatory process constitutes another grueling challenge for the US. Currently the Iranian position essentially is that a Middle East peace is inseparable from a normalization of the security situation in Lebanon. That is, the present Israeli attacks on the Hezbollah presence in Lebanon must cease if a comprehensive peace is to be realized in West Asia.

However, Israel is showing no signs of drawing back from its attacks on Hezbollah strongholds in Lebanon since the security of the Israeli state is being seen as threatened by the militant group. Co-opting Israel into the negotiatory effort therefore would turn out to be a matter of paramount concern for the US.

Moreover, elements in the rightist administration in Israel are seeing the current peace efforts as a ‘sell out’ to the enemies of Israel. They would have none of it. It is left to be seen how the US would be managing these virtual storm centres in the diplomatic process that could very well bring down the overall purported peace drive.

A recent pronouncement by US Vice President J.D. Vance points to yet another problem area in the US’ current peace overtures. He said that, ‘Regional peace and stability includes stopping the funding of terrorist organizations.’ He was obviously referring to the support extended by Iran to Hezbollah when he mentioned ‘terrorist organizations’ but he has given fresh life to the age-old conundrum of ‘Who is a terrorist?’ by these words.

To the Netanyahu government the Hezbollah and other militant organizations fighting Israel are ‘terrorists’ but from the viewpoint of the Iranian regime they are ‘freedom fighters’. This seemingly insurmountable definitional issue would not only stubbornly bedevil the peace effort but could even figure in bringing about its collapse, unless judiciously handled.

Thus, it’s the thorny details that need to be watched to keep the West Asian peace process afloat, once it gets going in earnest. There is no doubt that US President Trump would be receiving a considerable amount of support from the G7 in this historic peace undertaking and his personal appeals to the grouping currently meeting in France for continuous support are likely to elicit a positive response from it.

Likewise, Trump would need to appeal to also the BRICS countries if almost total global support is to be garnered for the peace drive in West Asia. BRICS’ solidarity with the US and the West is likely to carry considerable weight with Iran and other Eastern actors who are key to a sustained peace drive in the Middle East.

Features

Sri Lanka’s elephant paradox: Govt. counts tourism dollars while playing a dangerous numbers game: Expert

Published

16 hours ago

2026/06/18

Sahan Weerasooriya

At a time when Sri Lanka is enjoying a resurgence in wildlife tourism, with elephants remaining the undisputed stars of the country’s national parks and one of its most marketable natural assets, elephant conservationist Supun Lahiru Prakash has sounded a stark warning: the nation is in danger of losing the very species that helps attract millions of tourism dollars while sustaining some of the island’s most important ecosystems.

Supun says repeated claims by authorities that Sri Lanka’s elephant population is increasing, despite the absence of a final survey report and amid continuing elephant deaths, risk creating a misleading narrative that could undermine conservation efforts and encourage retaliation against elephants.

According to Supun, the issue is not merely about numbers. It is about political priorities, scientific credibility and the future of one of Sri Lanka’s most iconic species.

“Repeatedly claiming that the elephant population is increasing appears to be an attempt to hide the Government’s inability to manage the rising annual elephant death rate and the complications of human-elephant conflict,” Supun said.

For decades, the Sri Lankan elephant has been a symbol of the country’s rich natural heritage. It is the centrepiece of wildlife tourism, drawing visitors from across the globe to national parks such as Yala, Udawalawe, Minneriya, Kaudulla and Wilpattu. International wildlife documentaries, tourism campaigns and social media promotions frequently place elephants at the heart of Sri Lanka’s nature tourism brand.

Yet, according to Supun, the country’s conservation policies do not reflect the value of the species.

“On one hand, the Government is enjoying increasing tourism revenue, and elephants remain one of Sri Lanka’s most important wildlife attractions. On the other hand, narratives are being promoted that could encourage retaliation against the very species that contributes significantly to the country’s tourism industry,” Supun said.

According to the First Countrywide National Survey of Elephants conducted in 2011, Sri Lanka had 5,879 elephants. However, official statistics show that 4,167 elephants died between 2012 and 2024.

Supun stressed that these figures represent only the deaths officially recorded by the Department of Wildlife Conservation.

“In a context where more than 70 percent of the country’s elephant population reported in 2011 has died within 13 years, it is difficult to accept claims that the population has increased,” Supun said.

The conservationist pointed out that elephants have the longest gestation period among land mammals and that scientific studies have reported increasing interbirth intervals among female elephants together with high calf mortality.

“When such biological realities are taken into consideration, claims of a dramatic increase in elephant numbers become difficult to understand,” Supun said.

Supun believes that repeated references to increasing elephant populations risk fuelling public hostility towards elephants, particularly among farming communities already affected by crop raids and property damage.

“Such claims can create the impression that elephant populations are exploding and thereby promote retaliation against elephants as well,” Supun said.

According to Supun, Sri Lanka’s elephant crisis cannot be understood solely through population estimates. The real issue lies in the country’s failure to address human-elephant conflict through long-term, science-based solutions.

Sri Lanka continues to record among the highest levels of human-elephant conflict in the world. Every year, hundreds of elephants and dozens of people lose their lives as competition for land and resources intensifies.

Despite the scale of the crisis, Supun says authorities continue to rely on strategies that have repeatedly failed.

Lahiru Prakash

These include driving elephants into protected areas, strengthening electric fences to confine them there and allocating additional manpower to maintain fencing systems.

Supun was also critical of several proposals that emerged from district-level discussions on conflict mitigation, including the sowing of paddy and corn using Air Force drones and the planting of fruit orchards within protected areas.

“Such proposals fail to address the real ecological and social dimensions of the conflict,” Supun said.

While welcoming reports that the Government intends appointing a national-level mechanism to tackle human-elephant conflict, Supun said the challenge required intervention at the highest level of government.

“Given the gravity, complexity and geographical spread of human-elephant conflict, appointing any committee other than a Presidential Task Force is not useful,” Supun said.

He argued that a Presidential Task Force chaired by either the President or the Secretary to the President would be better positioned to overcome the bureaucratic delays and institutional fragmentation that have hindered previous efforts.

Supun also stressed the urgent need to restore and protect elephant corridors and home ranges that allow elephants to move safely across landscapes.

He cited the Koholankala elephant corridor in Hambantota as one example where removing obstacles could help reduce conflict while improving habitat connectivity.

At the same time, Supun questioned policies that permit the allocation of forest lands in areas identified by environmental assessments as crucial elephant ranges and movement corridors.

“The opening of elephant corridors and the protection of elephant home ranges must be carried out scientifically and consistently if they are to succeed,” Supun said.

Beyond tourism, Supun emphasised the ecological importance of elephants.

“Elephants are ecosystem engineers. Through their feeding habits and movements, they help maintain habitats that support numerous other species. In many ways, they create safer and healthier environments for wildlife,” Supun said.

According to Supun, protecting elephants means protecting entire ecosystems and the biodiversity upon which Sri Lanka’s wildlife tourism industry depends.

“By protecting elephants, we are also protecting the biodiversity that makes Sri Lanka one of the world’s premier wildlife tourism destinations,” Supun said.

As Sri Lanka seeks to expand tourism earnings and strengthen its reputation as a wildlife destination, Supun believes the country faces a defining choice: continue with policies that have failed to stem elephant deaths and human-elephant conflict, or embrace a science-based conservation strategy that safeguards both people and wildlife.

Without a fundamental shift in policy and political will, Supun warned, Sri Lanka risks losing not only one of its most iconic species but also the ecological and economic benefits that elephants continue to provide.

“The suffering of both farmers and elephants will only intensify unless meaningful action replaces rhetoric,” Supun said.

By Ifham Nizam

Features

Top Model of the World 2026

Published

16 hours ago

2026/06/18

Sahan Weerasooriya

Back-to-back victory for Colombia

Katherine Castaño of Colombia claimed the Top Model of the World 2026 crown, securing a historic back-to-back victory for her country. Angelica Sanchez of Puerto Rico was named first runner-up, and Eunice Deza of the Philippines finished as second runner-up.

Katherine was crowned by outgoing titleholder Natalia Garizabal Vera of Colombia.

Several special category awards, and subsidiary titles, were also presented during the Top Model of the World 2026 pageant.

These awards recognised excellence in modelling, peer support, and regional representation.

Primary Subsidiary Titles

Sri Lanka’s Netalie Withanage: Top 16 at
the grand finale

Miss Globe 2026: Valentina Tabares (Ecuador) — Awarded to the contestant who perfectly balances fashion modelling with traditional beauty queen qualities.

Queen of Europe 2026: Mia Danielle Williams (United Kingdom) — Given to the highest-ranking candidate from a European nation.

Special Awards Recognition

Audience Iconic Award: Charly (Dominican Republic) — Won via the official public online vote, granting her a fast-track direct entry into the Top 6.

Exotic Model of the World: Angel Emeka (Nigeria) — Awarded for exceptional editorial presence and strong runway performance.

Best Body Award: Thailand — Voted directly by fellow contestants at the Flow Spectrum Hotel. The highest-ranking runners-up for this category included Zambia, South Africa, Colombia, and Ghana.

Angelica Sanchez (Puerto Rico): 1st Runner-up

Final Placement

Winner: Katherine Castaño (Colombia)

1st Runner-Up: Angelica Sanchez (Puerto Rico)

2nd Runner-Up: Eunice Deza (Philippines)

Top 6 Finalists: Included contestants from the Dominican Republic, Romania, and Germany.

The pageant, known for focusing on professional modelling careers over just beauty, brought together 36 models from around the globe for two weeks of runway, photoshoots, and cultural events.

Sri Lanka’s Netalie Withanage walked among 36 of the world’s best and powered her way into the Top 16 at the grand finale.