RECENT WORK (selected):
Journalism:
“US universities are failing to protect victims of sexual assault”: The Cornell case illustrates how university bureaucracies discourage complaints, obstruct accountability and protect institutional reputations. Al Jazeera English. Opinion. 22 October 2026.
Peer-Reviewed Articles:
“Developing a politically conscious photographic practice in apartheid South Africa: Rafique Mayet’s images of Natal.” Verge: Studies in Global Asias, 11:1, 2025, pp. 252-286.
Book chapters:
“Travelling Ayahs: Shadow Cosmopolitans in 19th-century British Empire-making.” Black Chronicles: Photography, Race and Difference in Victorian Britain, edited by Renée Mussai, Thames & Hudson, 2025, pp. 206-217.
Essay in an artist’s book:
“Launch your paper boats in the stream, let them carry your story.” Longform essay, included in the artist’s book, The Other Side of Now, Tuấn Andrew Nguyễn. Zeitz-MOCCA, 2025.
“Tracing an Absence: Lindokuhle Sobekwa’s I carry Her photo with Me. Longform essay, included in Lindokuhle Sobekwa’s first photobook, I carry Her photo with Me. MackBooks, May 2024.
Longform essays in arts journals:
“What it Means to Continue: On Gabrielle Goliath, Reparative Work, and Resisting State Violence.” Longform essay. Momus, 14 May 2026.
Invited Talks/Lectures:
“An album in an armoire: Cold War photographs, and a record of an exceptional subject” at “The Image Complex: Photography, Vision, and Belief”. Session: “Ordinary Pictures: The Photograph and the Personal Record. September 3rd 2026
“Launch your paper boats in the stream, let them carry your story” at “The Other Side of Then: Framing the Archive” — symposium on artist Tuan Andrew Nguyen. Zeitz MOCAA, Cape Town, South Africa. 23 August 2025.
“Photographic practices for a perforated history” at “Image Worlds: Approaching the Bicentennial of Photography” symposium, Delhi, India. 25-26 August 2025.
M. Neelika Jayawardane is a writer and scholar. She is Professor of English at a public university in Upstate New York, and a Senior Research Associate at The Johannesburg Institute for Advanced Study (JIAS), University of Johannesburg, South Africa. She was born in Sri Lanka, raised in Zambia, and completed her university education in the US. Her research and writing – both creative and scholarly – are informed by Southern Africa’s history, and by the work of contemporary artists and visual worlds.
Supported by a book grant from the Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers, she is currently completing a book project on Afrapix, a South African photographers’ collective that operated during the last decade of apartheid.
She completed a critical writing residency at the Center for Photography at Woodstock in 2021, and received support from the Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant for an interdisciplinary project examining photography from Sri Lanka’s civil war period, titled, “This is not the correct history.” In 2023, she was a writing fellow at The Johannesburg Institute for Advanced Study (JIAS) at the University of Johannesburg. Along with academic publications and longform essays for museum exhibitions and artists’ books, her writing has been featured in Al Jazeera English, Momus, Hyperallergic, Transition, Aperture, frieze, The South African Mail & Guardian, and other venues.