Verita Sriratana

Verita Sriratana is Associate Professor of Literary Studies at the Department of English, Faculty of Arts, Chulalongkorn University. She is former Visiting Research Fellow in Human Rights (Regional Asia Pacific Programme) at the Raoul Wallenberg Institute of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law (RWI) in Lund.

Verita earned her BA (1st class honours, with gold medal award for highest academic achievement) in English from Chulalongkorn University, her MA (Distinction) in Colonial and Postcolonial Literature in English from the University of Warwick and her PhD in English from the University of St Andrews. The title of her MA Dissertation is Historical Fiction and Postcolonialism: Analysis of Amitav Ghosh’s In an Antique Land and David Dabydeen’s The Counting House and the title of her PhD thesis is “Making Room” for One’s Own: Virginia Woolf and Technology of Place. The title of her first book is Particular Modernity/Modernism: Locating Modernist Moments in Czech and Slovak Literature (2015).

Verita worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of English Language and Literature, Faculty of Education, Comenius University in Bratislava, Slovak Republic, as a recipient of the Slovak National Scholarship in 2013-2014. She is a recipient of the 2019 Gratias Agit Award presented by the Czech Minister of Foreign Affairs for her contribution in promoting Czech culture, films and literary works in Thailand.

Verita researches in Gender, Necropolitics, Epistemic Violence, Postcolonial Studies and Modernist Studies. She was recently a guest lecturer on the topic of “Decoloniality and Epistemic Violence in Thailand's Current Pro-Democracy Movement: An Activist Academic’s Experience and Advocacy for Feminism and Marriage Equality” at the Global Gender Matters International Workshop, Department of Gender Studies, Lund University, and on the topic of “Gender and Decoloniality in IR & Diplomacy” for the “Women in Foreign Service” course at the School of International Relations and Diplomacy, Anglo-American University in Prague (Summer School). She was invited as guest speaker for “Thai Totalitarians? Why the Love of Authoritarian Symbols?: A Discussion with Verita Sriratana” broadcast as part of the Nordic Asia Podcast series and as guest speaker on the topic of “Gender-Based Violence in Thailand’s Pro-Democracy Movement” held as part of the Thailand Social Science Seminar Series – TS4 and sponsored by the Sydney Southeast Asia Centre (SSEAC), the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) and the New York Southeast Asia Network (NYSEAN) (https://youtu.be/c4PVsQXAtuo).

Her latest publications include a research article entitled “The Land of Smiles, Nazi Chic and Communist Cool: Personality Cult and ‘Democide & Holocaust Indifference’ in Thailand”, published as part of Proceedings of the First International Symposium, Identifying and Countering Holocaust Distortion: Lessons For and From Southeast Asia. Ed. Never Again Association. Warsaw: Never Again Association, 2022 (https://online.fliphtml5.com/zfgnm/rbue/#p=84), an article entitled “‘Thailand—A Queer H(e)aven?’ & ‘Queering Misogyny’ in the Contexts of Thai Constitutional Court Ruling against Same-Sex Marriage and the Roe v. Wade Reversal” (Prachatai English. 19 July 2022. https://prachatai.com/english/node/9916) and an article entitled “Literary Studies in the Age of ‘Productivity’” (Prachatai English. 7 March 2022. https://prachatai.com/english/node/9730). Her forthcoming works include the Thai translation of Susan Sellers's novel entitled Vanessa and Virginia (2008) and a research article entitled "I Burn (Marx’s) Paris: 'Capital' Cities, Alienation & Deconstruction in the Works of Bruno Jasieński" to be published in the Temporalities of Modernism Center of European Modernist Studies Volume as part of the CEMS series by La Casa editrice universitaria Ledizioni.