RESEARCH AND WRITING
Creative
Sand & sweat: poems from 2012-2022
Sand & Sweat is a collection of poems by Ashanee Nihinsa Kottage. Each poem, like a ring on the bark of a tree, details emotional tumults over a decade–sharing mistakes, lessons, and celebrations of love, home, girlhood, and later, womanhood. This collection will massage your senses; through each chapter, Sand, Simmer, Sigh, Sea, Sum, Sweat, and Salt, you will yearn for the ground and the waves, you will feel rage and release it, calculate the geometry of your own heartbreaks, and savor the taste of sweet and salty delights. It is a seduction of sibilance, rhythm, and story.
purchase here
Rhodes Trust
Global Rhodes Scholarship Finalist 2022
Read constituency justification, personal statement, and academic statement
HUNGRY published by Burgeon
CRITICAL
United Nations Peace Building Fund
Intern to Mr. Janeen Fernando
June – August 2019
Summary Presentation: Literature Review on Violent Extremism and Hate Speech in Sri Lanka
Preventing Violent Extremism: Counter-Narratives: Evaluating the efficacy of counter & alternate narratives as a PVE tool
Social Media Monitoring reports: Data from Meltwater and Social Bakers
Anti-Muslim Incidents database: Tracking Islamophobic incidents in the aftermath of the 2019 Easter Attacks
Language Audit launch: Program to foster better trilingual service delivery in the public sector
PAFFREL (People’s Action for Free and Fair Elections) Consultation: Non-profit human capital management consultation
Academic Writing / Course Work
Georgetown University Major in Science, Technology, and International Affairs
September 2018 - May 2022
Research Assistant to Dr. Clare Fieseler | Science-Policy Brief
Global South: Politics, Literature, and Film
Midterm Paper: Reparations in All Shapes and Sizes
Presentation: Female Leisure and Male Vulnerability in Monsoon Wedding and Bend it like Beckham
Final Paper: Locating Afropolitanism within Return Migration in Americanah
Science, Technology, and International Affairs Honors Thesis
A class-based enabling of the Sri Lankan government’s ineffective national park management: an exploration of the colonial gaze of domestic tourists at the Yala National Park
Working Draft: Introduction, Methods, Literature Review, Background
Designing Development in Africa
Final Paper: Research paper on the state of the African technology space as it pertains to tech hubs, their challenges, and potential
Intensive Advanced French II
Le devoir de culture générale: Sujet: Relations franco-africaines Problématique: La présence française en Afrique est encore force mais c’est en déclin ainsi nuisant à la sphère d'influence de la France en Afrique
Comparative Political Systems
Policy Brief: Policy Brief to Sri Lanka’s Minister of Agriculture, Duminda Dissanayake
Paired Comparison: Paired comparative political analysis on 'Intrastate Armed Conflict and Women in Parliament: A Comparison of the Divergent Paths of Namibia and Mali'
Deeper Sources of Environmental Policy
Archival Research Project on Framing Climate Change: Collaborated with the National Geographic Society based in Washington, D.C. and Professor Claire Fieseler to map the framing of climate change in the 1976 National Geographic article which first introduced climate change as a global problem, and comparing it to the Kyoto Protocol
International Relations
'Evaluating Political Theory on Climate Change in light of the Paris Agreement': Evaluated the reality of the impacts of the U.S. withdrawal from the Paris Agreement and other contemporary political realities associated with climate change against theoretical expectations.
journalism
The Caravel | Washington, D.C. | Writer (Sub-Saharan Africa), Editor (Indo-Asia-Pacific)
September 2018 – February 2019
IVolunteer International | International | Op-ed Writer
June 2017 – January 2018
Pulse Magazine | Colombo, Sri Lanka | Freelance Writer and Reviewer
January 2016 – August 2018
Entertainment Review: Magic Box Mixup – your new go-to band