Depicting the Sri Lankan Vernacular
About this collection
The materials in this collection represent over fifty years of inquiry into life in a remote Sri Lankan village. It contains original photographs and drawings drawn from ethnographic research on architecture and traditional domestic life in Sri Lanka, conducted in various periods between 1965 and 2012, by Bonnie and Robert MacDougall. These images, as well as other visual records, pertain to lifeways and hereditary practices in the Central Highlands, and more particularly to a single remote Sinhala community, Mimure, in the hinterlands of the Kandy District.
Historical context
Professor Bonnie MacDougall worked on this digital collection during the last years of her life, up until her death in November 2017. This ethnographic research began as a collaborative project between Bonnie and her husband, Robert "Scotty" MacDougall, who died in 1987. Both this site and the previously published digital collection, Beyond the Taj: Architectural Traditions and Landscape in South Asia, highlight Robert’s photographs and are an effort to posthumously make his visual record of South Asia accessible to a wider audience. Bonnie continued her research in Sri Lanka after Robert’s death and had the opportunity to witness the changing cultural ways of traditional village life over the full arc of her academic career. The collection is a record of the past as well as a resource for future generations for whom the Sri Lankan vernacular is becoming more removed in space and time.
Using the collection
This collection includes a number of material types (e.g., photographs, plans, maps, etc.) which can be explored using the Work Type facet.
For more information about this collection, please contact the Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections at rareref@cornell.edu.
Sets
More information
- Collection steward
- Evan Earle, Peter J. Thaler University Archivist
- Metadata creation
- Bonnie MacDougall, Professor Emerita of Architecture
- Funding
- Grants Program for Digital Collections in the College of Architecture, Art and Planning, awarded to Bonnie MacDougall in 2015.
- Credits
- This collection overview last reviewed by Evan Earle, collection steward, in 2025, and adapted from an introduction to the collection written by Bonnie and Carlin MacDougall.
- Collection sources