Nihal Perera

Nihal Perera's main research interest is in the social production of space. His work focuses on how ordinary people transform found, provided, and imposed spaces into spaces that can support their daily activities and cultural practices.

Highlighting how Asian cities have become databases for external theories, and how much we do not know about them, Transforming Asian Cities calls for the study of Asian cities on their own terms. Addressing a huge gap in the work of Lefebvre and Harvey, People's Spaces attempts to define lived spaces. It demonstrates how the users bring designed and planned (abstract) spaces to life through the familiarization of these, i.e., the envisaged subjects making these spaces support their daily activities and cultural practices. Nihal’s first book Decolonizing Ceylon maps out the colonial production of Sri Lanka, from Colombo, and its politics of space.

Perera’s other publications include, Importing Urban Problems so requiring and transforming planning; the establishment of The Planners’ City; Indigenizing and Feminizing the City by urban subjects; Contesting Modernities in Chandigarh; the attempt to Redevelop Dharavi; and the racist underpinnings of American urban planning. Delving into the issue of Development, the special issue of Bhumi demonstrates how the Sri Lankan governments (as many others) have squandered (national) “development opportunities.”

The two-time Fulbright Scholar (China and Myanmar) was Senior Research Fellow at the National University of Singapore, Melting Pot Fellow at King Mongkut Institute (KMITL), Bangkok, and Distinguished Visiting Scholar at the University of Alberta. He received three Fulbright-Hays awards and was nominated for Fukuoka, Heiskell and Malone awards. Besides the USA, Nihal has taught in China, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Italy, Myanmar, Nepal, Sri Lanka, and Thailand. His main contribution to teaching and pedagogy is CapAsia, a reflective-learning immersive-semester in Asia in which the participants learn about communities, from the locals, by doing work with them.