The American Institute for Sri Lankan Studies (AISLS) recently held a two-day workshop entitled, "Rethinking Kinship and Marriage in Sri Lanka: Gender, Intimacy and Change," in Kandy. This two day workshop included thirteen presentations by both junior and senior scholars.
The workshop enabled participants to gain a good sense of the changing and variable nature of marriage and family forms in Sri Lanka, a country that in recent decades has undergone rapid social change as a result of civil war and globalization. In particular, the workshop was useful for younger researchers who saw the need to take these changes into account in their work on development-oriented research projects, such as poverty alleviation and improving the status of women.