Jonathan Spencer’s (FBA, FRSE) primary research site has been Sri Lanka. His original work there focused on rural change, politics and nationalism. He has since published extensively on the causes and consequences of ethnic violence. He has also published occasional articles on Buddhism, and on the institutional history of British anthropology. Since 2004 he has been involved in a string of collaborative projects with younger Sri Lankan colleagues, on politics and religion, and most recently on urban planning, and the history and ethics of political dissent. In this work he has increasingly experimented with new modes of North-South collaboration and co-writing.