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.  Considered to be more than just an academic Professor Lakshman is also known as one of the country’s foremost economists, and serves on the Advisory Council on Economics to the President.  Professor Lakshman is  the President of the Council of the Colombo Plan for Cooperative Economic and Social Development in Asia and the Pacific. 

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.

Dr Dissanaike is a Financial Economist and a Senior Don at Cambridge University. He is a University Reader and the Director of the Cambridge MPhil Programme in Finance, a cross-faculty programme involving three faculties – Economics, Maths and Judge Business School. Dr Dissanaike is also a Director of Studies for Management Studies at Trinity College, Cambridge. He was recently a visiting professor at Cornell University and, previously, an ESRC Research Fellow and ICAEW Academic Fellow. His research interests include the efficiency and performance of the UK stock market, and corporate finance and governance in emerging markets.

Professor of Political Science, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, former  Director, Indian Council of Social Science Research, New Delhi.  A prolific  writer, he has contributed extensively to professional journals, edited volumes, and newspapers.  His books include Ethnicity Versus Nationalism: The Devolution Discourse in Sri Lanka.

Professor of the Department of Political Science.  She is a comparativist 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.

Head, Faculty of Law, University of Colombo; Member of the Sri Lanka Law Commission; 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.

Head,  South Asia Department at Inalco – Institute of Oriental Studies of the University Paris where he teaches South Asian History.  He devoted most of his research activities to Sri Lanka, which he has been visiting regularly since the early 70s. He has published several articles in Frence, U.K. Sri Lanka and Indian academic journals dealing with the modern history of Sri Lanka.  His translation to French of Robert Knox’s An Historical Relation of the Island Ceylon was published in 1983. 

Professor of Tamil, University of Peradeniya.  A well- known scholar, poet and literary critic in Tamil, who has published thirty books as an author, editor and translator.