PAMUDU TENNAKOON

RESEARCH

Colonial architectural forms are not merely static factors in a nation’s history. Rather, they are influential in contemporary society, casting their weight in the economic, political, social, and cultural spheres. Colonial ruins have a particularly outsized role as physical reminders of a bygone era, given their enormity and scale. My research analyzes the ways in which people understand, rewrite, and negotiate their identities in relation to their colonial pasts. How have colonial architectural forms and styles become engrained in histories and cultures, from the postcolonial to the contemporary? How do people continue to occupy and traverse once-colonial spaces, and how do they relate to the physical remnants of these pasts? And most importantly, how do these engagements with colonial architecture reflect processes of decolonization?