The Kumary Jayawardena Feminist Archive was conceptualised from a desire among a small group of feminists, to pay tribute to the work and contributions of Dr. Kumari Jayawardena – one of the foremost scholars that Sri Lanka has produced and one of the foremothers of the feminist movement. As Kate Eichhorn who has written about feminist archives reminds us, the feminist archive is ‘where academic and activist work frequently converge’. In a way Kumari combined these aspects of feminism in one person, as scholar par excellence, an extraordinary activist and a pioneering teacher and  educator. 

The work of constructing the archive began in mid-2025, led by the Steering Committee, and implemented by the team at SSA. OVer 6 months, the team collected, collated, categorised and digitized, physical and digital copies of her published work and photographs. In early 2026, the site for the archive was designed and the collated items were made available on the site. 

At this moment, this archive only captures a sliver of her work and life. What we are collecting is limited to the published writings of and about Kumari. It does not, at this moment, include letters, diaries, papers, manuscripts, handwritten notes, etc. As more and more people engage with this archive, we hope that it will lead us to unknown or lost writing and records relating to Kumari, including ephemera, such as letters and correspondence with other scholars and activists, thereby allowing us to expand the archive.