Gen-Z Protest in South Asia: Sri Lanka in Comparative Perspective

Speaker: John Harriss, Prof. Emeritus, Department of International Studies, SFU

Discussants/Respondents: Shivaji Mukherjee, Polital Science, SFU and Sara Shneiderman, Anthropology, UBC

Date: Thursday, November 12

Time: 5.30 pm

Location: Harbour Centre Room 1600, SFU Vancouver campus

About the Event

South Asia has seen several youth led protest movements in recent times – Sri Lanka in 2022, Bangladesh 2024, Nepal 2025, and in India, ongoing. All have sought to bring about political change. In his talk John Harriss asks whether the Aragalaya [Struggle] in Sri Lanka has brought the 'system change' that protesters hoped for and promises long term transformation of politics and governance. Analyzing the case of Sri Lanka together with comparative insights from the similar protests in Bangladesh, Nepal and India, the speakers will assess their implications for democracy in South Asia and beyond.

About the Speaker

John Harriss, Professor Emeritus of International Studies at Simon Fraser University, is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, and both a former Director of the Development Studies Institute at the London School of Economics and Dean of the School of Development Studies at the University of East Anglia, in the U.K.

He is the author, co-author or editor of 20 books, almost all of them having to do with aspects of India's economy, society, or politics. Among them are Reinventing India: Economic Liberalisation, Hindu Nationalism and Popular Democracy, written with Stuart Corbridge and published in 2000, and much more recently, Liberty; the Indian Story, published by Speaking Tiger, in Delhi in 2024.