Tambapanni Academic Publishers launched in Colombo
View(s):Tambapanni Academic Publishers (TAP), a Colombo-based independent publisher of academic books in social sciences and humanities was formally launched in an online event on 21st August 2021.
TAP is initiated by four friends, Karnika Jayatilake, Sasanka Perera, Coralie Pietersz, Nira Wickramasinghe, and is guided by a board of advisors composed of eminent professionals and academics. An international board of editors ensures the high standard of the publications.
Ms Jayatilake and Ms Coralie Pietersz are from the corporate sector while Professors Wickramasinghe and Perera are academics initially from the University of Colombo but now based in Leiden and New Delhi respectively. Prof Nira Wickramasinghe addressing those present said that the goal of TAP was to bring the best practices associated with globally renowned university presses to academic publishing in Sri Lanka. She further noted that one of the main activities of TAP is to publish locally, key academic texts focused on Sri Lanka published elsewhere in the world to make these books accessible to local scholars, students and universities and to make them more affordable.
Beyond this, she said that Tambapanni will also publish original texts in addition to initiating a niche publication program via translations first in Sinhala and later in Tamil as well. Professor Perera in his address outlined the state of Sri Lankan social sciences and humanities and academic publishing in the country, and noted that it is not an exaggeration to say these fields are in a “state of decay and crisis” in institutional terms though there are always individuals who try to do their best within the existing system. He further noted that the initiators of TAP hoped their efforts “will bring knowledge into the country and will also take our knowledge out, and more importantly, make knowledge affordable.”
The event also launched the first two books of Tambapanni, Prof Wickramasinghe’s Slave in a Palanquin: Colonial Servitude and Resistance in Sri Lanka (TAP, Colombo, 2021) initially published by Columbia University Press in 2020, and can be ordered online via SL Books and Perera Hussein Publications.
The other book is the e-edition of ‘Imagining Modernity: The Architecture of Valentine Gunasekara’ by Anoma Pieris (e-book, TAP, Colombo, 2021) first published by Stamford Lake in 2007, and is available via Amazon and Barnes and Noble Online.
Forthcoming publications by Tambapanni for this year include Professor Nihal Perera’s isf,dakfhka ,xldjg: hg;aúð;;ajh, cd;sh iy wjldYSh foaYmd,kh initially published by West View Press in 2011 as Society and Space: Colonialism, Nationalism, and Postcolonial Identity in Sri Lanka’ and Professor Ronit Ricci’s Banishment and Belonging: Exile and Diaspora in Sarandib, Lanka and Ceylon first published in 2019 by Cambridge University Press.
Speaking on behalf of its initiators, Prof Wickramasinghe said interested academics with book ideas or manuscripts can get in touch with TAP and explore possibilities of future collaboration.
More information on Tambapanni is available on its website:
https://www.tambapannipublishers.lk/