Sports and Exercise Science

This letter tells the story of a young woman and a man I met during fieldwork with some university students in Colombo, Sri Lanka in 2007/08. Here, Hiranthi - the narrator - writes a letter to her boyfriend of nine months Anish, interpreting the twists and turns of their relationship and highlights the ways in which the relationship fails to meet her expectations. Describing her expectations of romantic relationships and the efforts exerted in the making of it, this letter highlights that my interlocutors aspired towards a particular kind of romantic relationship – a ‘serious’ relationship. In this piece of writing, I use authorial and creative license to contextualise and interpret Hiranthi's and Anish's story within a frame of contemporary life in Sri Lanka, which I put together with the stories of others I met during fieldwork. I use the letter to highlight that romantic relationships of my interlocutors are embedded within particular discourses about the normative conjugal unit, which is essentially heterosexual. It illustrates that romantic relationships consist of a process of investment, a way of embedding one's sense of self. The article highlights the relational aspect of self, pointing out that one's life's worthiness could be tied to the people who are around them.

Explores how university students navigate uncertainty and search for meaning in their daily lives Investigates how university students in Colombo navigate sex and sexuality Is based on thorough ethnographic interviews with local respondents This book proposes that romantic relationships—filtered through various socio-cultural sieves— can lead to the development of affective kin bonds, which underlie our sense of personhood and belonging. Sirisena argues that the process resembles an attempt to make strangers into kin, and that sort of affective relating is a form of self-conscious relationality, in which the inhabitants reflect on their individual and collective needs, as well as their expectations and dreams in the future of their relationships. University students' romantic relationships, which they gloss as 'serious,' appear to be processual and non-linear, and are considered to be stabilising forces which are pitched against the inherent uncertainty in young people's lives.

Over the years, the high prevalence of suicide in the Sri Lankan society has attracted the attention of scholars from different disciplines who have offered diverse explanations and interpretations of the phenomenon, focusing on the immediate causes preceding acts of suicide and self-harm. Could it be that one view of death one hold impacts upon one’s willingness to consider suicide as a potential course of action? In this exploratory essay, I reflect on one story I encountered during my fieldwork among university students and offer a situated alternate explanation to self-harm, where I suggest that, when faced with seemingly unendurable trials, suicide and self-harm may be propelled by a hopeful view of death where death appears as hope not only in the sense that it brings an end to life’s unfair tribulations but also that the end it marks is not an end in itself but a new beginning.

This letter tells the story of a young woman and a man I met during fieldwork with some university students in Colombo, Sri Lanka in 2007/08. Here, Hiranthi – the narrator – writes a letter to her boyfriend of nine months Anish, interpreting the twists and turns of their relationship and highlights the ways in which the relationship fails to meet her expectations. Describing her expectations of romantic relationships and the efforts exerted in the making of it, this letter highlights that my interlocutors aspired towards a particular kind of romantic relationship – a 'serious' relationship. In this piece of writing, I use authorial and creative license to contextualise and interpret Hiranthi's and Anish's story within a frame of contemporary life in Sri Lanka, which I put together with the stories of others I met during fieldwork. I use the letter to highlight that romantic relationships of my interlocutors are embedded within particular discourses about the normativ...

Background A national policy for England, published in 2017, entitled ‘Transforming Children and Young People’s Mental Health Provision’ aimed to address the increasing prevalence mental health problems in children and tackle inequalities. In the context of this policy’s implementation as ongoing and the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic, the need for appropriate, timely and ongoing national government commitment is vital. Methods A narrative review using a problem representation evaluation [1], we critiqued the policy and related consultation documents using a social determinants of health perspective. We also reviewed wider policy discourses through engaging with stakeholder responses, providing an innovative methodological contribution to scholarship on public health policy and health inequalities. Results We found absences and oversights in relation to inequalities (most notably the lack of acknowledgement that mental health can cause inequalities), access, workforce capacity, an...