Background
She grew up in Paris and studied at the University of Paris IV - Sorbonne from 1981 to 1984 and at the University of Oxford from 1985 to 1989 where she earned her doctorate in Modern History.
She grew up in Paris and studied at the University of Paris IV - Sorbonne from 1981 to 1984 and at the University of Oxford from 1985 to 1989 where she earned her doctorate in Modern History.
University of Oxford. University of Paris.
She was a professor in the Department of History and International Relations, University of Colombo, Sri Lanka until 2009. She joined the University of Colombo in 1990 and taught there until 2009. She has been a World Bank Robert McNamara fellow, a Fulbright senior scholar at New York University, a visiting professor at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris, and more recently British Academy Fellow at Street Antony"s College, Oxford.
She is currently working on a history of the reception of the sewing machine in colonial Sri Lanka, a topic which she researched while on sabbatical at the Shelby Cullom Davis Center for Historical Studies Princeton University in 2008-2009.