 I'd like to welcome to the stage Udeni Hanchapoli Ahumalaji from the College of Asia and the Pacific. Thank you. And the title of Udeni's talk tonight is The Voice of Silence. Silence. Have you ever wondered if silence speaks? If it does, then how it speaks? My research is about silence, but a very particular sort. In 2006, I started working as a clinical psychologist in Sri Lanka, working with conflict-affected communities. They told me stories of war-related violence, infuriating injustices, and immense human resilience. A woman described the rotten smell of alcohol coming from her rapist heavy breath. A child's survival of sexual abuse told me the filth the man whispered into her ears as he went about abusing her. I desperately wanted to help her. In my way of working, healing starts with emotion. So I waited for my clients to bring out their emotions. They never did. Their stories had all the factual details of living. But when it came to how they felt about it, they gave me one answer. Silence. And that's what I'm studying in my PhD. What are emotions to my people? And why silence? The suffering of my informants is beyond the expressive capacity of words. But that's not the only reason behind their silence. Living in a context where one wrong word can bring new death, silence is a heaven of safety. Yet, despite such political silencing, emotions still get the voice. For instance, my study shows how rituals of commemorating the death or disappearance of a loved one create spaces where emotions find a powerful voice. As a whole, I believe what this project shows us are the innovative ways in which people don't just survive but live in a world that is deeply scarred with violence. So what? What's so important about Sri Lanka and the silence of its people? Well, I want you to know that Sri Lanka is not isolated in its trauma. As we speak, more than half of the world's nations are experiencing conflict and incitement. All this time, we had the worst of these nations. Torture, rape, death, genocide. But these same nations teach us powerful lessons of human resilience and creative survival. Only we didn't hear them. If we know the voice of their silence, then we can hear their stories. Imagine her silence amplified on a global scale. And let's listen to that silence. Not only of pain and suffering but of undefeatable hope.