Board of Directors
Professor W.D. Lakshman, (Chairman/ICES)
Emeritus Professor of Economic of the University of Colombo; served as Head of the Department of Economics, Dean of the Faculty of Graduate Studies, and as Vice Chancellor of the University of Colombo in a career spanning more than four decades. Professor Lakshman is the President of the Council of the Colombo Plan for Cooperative Economic and Social Development in Asia and the Pacific. He was also the Chairman of the Presidential Commission on Taxation. He was a founder member of the Institute of Policy Studies (IPS) and also serves in the its current Board of Governors. He is at present the Chairman of the Council of Management of Social Scientists Association.
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Professor Gananath Obeyesekere, Director
Emeritus Professor of Anthropology at Princeton University. He received his PhD in Anthropology from the University of Washington in 1964 and later taught at the University of California , San Diego before accepting a position at Princeton University. His many books include Medusa’s Hair: An Essay on Personal Symbols and Religious Experience, The Cult of the Goddess Pattini, The Apotheosis of Captain Cook: European Mythmaking in the Pacific and, with Richard Gombrich, Buddhism Transformed: Religious Change in Sri Lanka.
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Professor Amita Shastri
Director
ashastri@sfsu.edu
Department of Political Science
San Francisco State University
1600 Holloway Avenue
San Francisco, CA 94132, USA
(415) 338-2139
Professor of the Department of Political Science. She is a political scientist with research and teaching interests in democracy and democratization, ethnicity and nationalism, and political economy of development; especially with reference to South Asia and Sri Lanka. She earned her doctorate in Politics (International Studies) from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi (1985). She was awarded the Pew Faculty of Fellowship in International Affairs, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, 1990-1991; and has been Research Fellow and Visiting Scholar at California Institute of Technology, University of California, Los Angeles, and University of California at Berkley. She has edited The Post-Colonial States of South Asia: Democracy, Identity, Development and Security, with A. Jeyaratnam Wilson and is the author of numerous research articles and book chapters.
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Mr. Chandra Jayaratne, Director
Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Sri Lanka and of the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants, UK., Former President of the Ceylon Chamber of Commerce and the LMD Sri Lankan of the year 2001. He is also a member of the Board of Directors of Transparency International Sri Lanka (TIS).
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Dr. Deepika Udagama
Director
udagama@law.cmb.ac.lk
79/17, Kurunduwatta Road
Talangama South
Battaramulla
2590570 (Off)
2774633 (Res)
0773478260(M)
A leading human rights and legal scholar in Sri Lanka Head,Department of Faculty of Law, University of Peradeniya; founding Director of the Centre for the Study of Human Rights of the Faculty of Law, University of Colombo; former Member of Human Rights Commission of Sri Lanka; Visiting Professor United Nations University and School of Law, University of Hong Kong; former Alternate Member from Sri Lanka on the United Nations Sub Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights. She is presently a member of the Board of Directors of the Law and Society Trust.
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Desamanya Bradman Weerakoon
Director
virakun@sltnet.lk
Desamanya Bradman Weerakoon, M.A. (Mich), was in the public service for 35 years during which he  served as Advisor to three Presidents and Secretary to seven Prime Ministers of the country. After retirement, Mr. Weerakoon was selected as Secretary-General of the International Planned Parenthood Federation (London) and served in the international NGO field for a period of five years.
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Dr. Vijaya Samaraweera, Director
Dr. Vijaya Samaraweera received his undergraduate education at the University of Sri Lanka, Peradeniya, majoring in History and Politics. He received his PhD from Oxford University. Subsequently, he received his Juris Doctor degree from the New England School of Law in Boston, Massachusetts. After an academic career both in Sri Lanka and the United States and practicing as a lawyer in Boston, he turned to international development work, specializing in human rights, democracy and governance. He has undertaken long-term assignments on behalf of several United Nations agencies, international NGOs, and more recently, for USAID, in Cambodia, East Timor, Timor Lesote, Sri Lanka, Yemen, Iraq and Afghanistan.
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