Kanchana N Ruwanpura

Professor in Development Geography, University of Gothenburg
Kanchana N Ruwanpura is a Professor of Development Geography at the Human Geography Unit, University of Gothenburg, Sweden and a Fellow at the Centre for South Asian Studies (CSAS), University of Edinburgh, Scotland. Her PhD in Development Studies is from Newnham College, University of Cambridge. She has worked at the Edinburgh, Southampton, Hobart & William Smith Colleges, the University of Munich and the International Labor Office (Geneva).

Kanchana’s recent research explores themes around debt justice, the political economy of debt and feminist politics, with generous funding from the Bromanska and Adlerbertska Foundations and the University of Gothenburg. She came to this research through involvement in debt justice activism for Sri Lanka, which has resulted in a voluntary and virtual initiative called the Institute of Political Economy, Sri Lanka (https://ipe-sl.org)

Previously, she has broadly worked on themes around feminism, labour practices, ethical trade, infrastructural politics and ethnicity in South Asia. Her research has been funded by the AAUW, ESRC, the ERC and the British Academy, amongst others. Her research has been published in peer-reviewed journals, edited volumes, edited books and as research monographs published by Michigan University Press and Cambridge University Press. She served as editor for the journals Gender, Place and Culture and Geoforum and is on the Editorial Boards of Feminist Economics, Contemporary South Asia, Gender, Place and Culture and Environment and Planning A.

During 2019-20, she was awarded fellowships by the Humboldt Foundation, Max Weber Stiftung (declined) and France-ILO Chair at IAS-Nantes (France), where she finalised her last book, Garments without Guilt? Global Labour Justice and Ethical Codes in Sri Lankan Apparels published by Cambridge University Press. She recently completed and co-edited (with Amjad Saleem) the Routledge Handbook of Contemporary Sri Lanka (2025), which is published open access.