I haven’t updated this website in an embarrassingly long time, but I’m pleased to be share that my book “Pluriversal Sovereignty and the State: Imperial Encounters in Sri Lanka” was published by Manchester University Press in 2023, and the softcover edition is now out as of June 2025. The book was awarded the Sussex International Theory Prize by the Centre for Advanced International Theory at the University of Sussex in 2024-2025, and also awarded the Best Book Prize by the Global Development Studies Section of the International Studies Association in that same year. I’ve been fortunate to be able to share the research findings internationally, and striving to highlight the importance of understanding sovereignty in pluriversal and decolonial terms.
The above video is a recording from my recent visit to the Social Science Association in Colombo, where colleagues were kind enough to invite me to come discuss the book in conversation with some of my ongoing work on the significance of pluriversal sovereignty in 21st century Mi’kma’ki. The components of this talk came from connecting the historical and theoretical aspects of colonial state formation in 19th century Kandy to the ongoing settler-colonial disregard for pluriversal sovereignty in 21st century Mi’kma’ki, told through the still unresolved issue of Mi’kmaq fishing rights. I discussed this as a case study in why the violence of Eurocentric “universal” sovereignty remains such a damaging problem for understanding the international in my 2023 article in Review of International Studies, “Pluriversal Sovereignty and the State of IR.”
Ajay Parasram 