Prof. Jayadeva Uyangoda

Chairman
Prof. Jayadeva Uyangoda is an internationally recognized scholar and an Emeritus Professor of Political Science and Public Policy at the University of Colombo. A previous Treasurer of SSA, he has been associated with the institute for almost four decades. A widely published scholar in both English and Sinhala, Prof. Uyangoda’s publications span a wide range of topics including democracy, local governance, political reforms, state reforms, social inclusion and exclusion, political violence, human rights, ethnic politics, and conflict resolution.

Dr. Pradeep Peiris

Secretary
Dr. Pradeep Peiris is Head and Senior Lecturer of the Department of Political Science and Public Policy, University of Colombo, and Director and Treasurer of SSA. He obtained his PhD in Political Science from the University of Colombo under the NUFU/ NOMA fellowship scheme of the University of Oslo, Norway. A leading survey researcher in Sri Lanka with over two decades of experience, Dr. Peiris has published on a wide array of subjects ranging from electoral politics to opinion polling, gender, liberal economy, and the democratic discourse in Sri Lanka. He is also part of numerous international collaborations as well as the current country representative of the ‘World Association for Public Opinion Research’ (WAPOR) and ‘Democracy Barometer.’

Balasingham Skanthakumar

Treasurer

Balasingham Skanthakumar is an editor of Polity magazine and convenor of SSA’s ‘Critical Agrarian Studies’ seminar. He read law at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London in between student union politics, subsequently specialising in international and comparative environmental and human rights law. He has been a higher education teacher, civil society activist and researcher, and an international civil servant. His ongoing research interests are in development studies, labour relations, and the left movement. He is a founder and former director of Himal Southasian in Sri Lanka, and council member of the Women’s Education and Research Centre.

Prof. Neloufer De Mel

Prof. Neloufer de Mel is Professor Emeritus at the Department of English, University of Colombo. Her teaching and research publications are in the disciplinary fields of cultural, postcolonial, gender, and performance studies. She has been the Head of the Department of English and the Director of Studies of the Faculty of Arts, University of Colombo and has held several distinguished research fellowships at international universities and academic institutes including Yale, the Institute for Human Sciences, Vienna, the Universities of Zurich, New York, Technical University Dresden, and the Five College Women’s Studies Research Center, USA. She is former Chair of the Gratiaen Trust which works towards promoting Sri Lankan literature in English and has served on many juries at national and international theatre and film festivals.

Prof. Farzana Haniffa

Prof. Farzana Haniffa is a Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Colombo and was a Smuts visiting fellow in Commonwealth studies at the Center for South Asian Studies at the University of Cambridge (2018/19). She obtained her Ph.D. in Anthropology from Columbia University, New York. Her research and activist interests have concentrated on the social and political history of Muslim communities and on gender politics in Sri Lanka. She has published on the Islamic reform movements, the history of minority involvement in electoral politics and the 2001 peace process, Northern Muslims’ place in discourses regarding return, resettlement, and reconciliation, and on the post-war mobilizing of anti-Muslim rhetoric.

Dr Chulani Kodikara

Chulani Kodikara currently works as a researcher with the Social Scientists’ Association (SSA). She is also part of the editorial collective of Polity, the English-language magazine of the SSA. Her research explores women’s struggles for justice and equality, gender and ethnonationalism and the translation or vernaculariation of international norms in specific local /national contexts in Sri Lanka. Previously, she has worked with institutions such as the Consultation Task Force on Reconciliation Mechanisms, the International Centre for Ethnic Studies, the Secretariat for Coordinating the Peace Process, Muslim Women’s Research and Action Forum, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Sri Lanka. She completed a PhD on the struggle for truth and justice being waged by Tamil women next-of-kin of the disappeared at the University of Edinburgh in 2022.

Prof Nirmal Ranjith Dewasiri

Prof Nirmal Ranjith Dewasiri received his BA (1991) and MPhil (2002)  from the University  of Colombo, where he serves as the Professor of history now. He has a PhD (2007) from the Leiden University, The Netherlands. He was the Sri Lankan Studies Chair at the South Asia Institute (SAI), Heidelberg University from April to September, 2017. He is the author of The Adaptable Peasant Agrarian Society in Western Sri Lanka under Dutch Rule, 1740-1800, (Leiden: Brill, 2008). He is also a political activist and academic who has been at the forefront of a number of significant movements for democratic change in the country.