RCSS Certificate Course on Creative Diplomacy Faculty Bios
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RCSS Certificate Course on Creative Diplomacy Faculty Bios Imtiaz Ahmed is Professor of International Relations and Director, Centre for Genocide Studies at the University of Dhaka. Professor Ahmed was educated at the University of Dhaka, Carlton University, Ottawa, and the Australian National University, Canberra. He is also currently Visiting Professor at the Sagesse University, Beirut. Professor Ahmed is the recipient of various awards and honours. He has been a fellow in the following institutions: Ford Foundation Fellow at the University of Oxford; Asia Fellow at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS), Delhi; Rockefeller Fellow at the Rockefeller Foundation; Japan Foundation Fellow at the Yokohama City University; Research Fellow at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore; and Foreign Policy Fellow at the University of Maryland and College Park. He has authored, co-authored, or edited 18 books and 6 monographs. More than 110 research papers and scholarly articles have been published in leading journals and chapters in edited volumes. His recent publication is an edited volume titled: Human Rights in Bangladesh: Past, Present & Futures (Dhaka: University Press Limited, 2014). His forthcoming publication is People of Many Rivers: Tales from the Riverbanks (Dhaka: University Press Limited, i.p.). Website: http://www.calternatives.org/imtiaz.php Anusha Alles is the head of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) at Brandix Lanka Ltd. After completion of primary and secondary education in Sri Lanka and Singapore, she completed two degrees holding a Bachelor of Arts (India) and LL.B (UK). She is a qualified Barrister in the UK and Attorney- at Law in Sri Lanka. She served at the Institute of Human Rights particularly involving in the project called "Juvenile Justice Project". She was employed at United Nations Office for Project Services team. Ms. Alles is the spearhead of Brandix CSR Centre and Bindu Foundation; two well-known entities in Sri Lanka’s CSR fraternity. She also serves on the Board of Directors of CSR Lanka (Guarantee) Ltd. Vinya Ariyaratne is the General Secretary of Sarvodaya Shramadana Sangamaya. He holds a Doctorate in Medicine from De La Salle University Philippines and a Doctorate in Community Medicine from the Postgraduate Institute of Medicine of the University of Colombo, while he has also obtained a M.Sc. in Community Medicine from the University of Colombo and a Masters in Public Health (International Health) from the Johns Hopkins University, USA. He has been a Visiting Fellow of the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine in the UK and has contributed to the corpus of medical literature through articles published in medical journals. Dr Ariyaratne has also served as a Lecturer in Community Medicine at the Faculty of Medical Sciences of the University of Sri Jayewardenepura. 1 Sutheash Balasubramaniam is the Country Representative for UN Global Compact; a UN strategic policy initiative for businesses that are committed to aligning their operations and strategies with ten universally accepted principles in the areas of human rights, labour, environment and anti-corruption. He is also Managing Director at Global Strategic Corporate Sustainability (Pvt) Ltd, former Chariman of Chartered Institute of Management Accountants (CIMA) Sri Lanka, and a former CEO/Director of Hayleys Business Solutions International (HBSI), a subsidiary of the Hayleys Group. Iliyasu Mohammed Biu is a PhD Candidate at the Faculty of Graduate Studies, University of Colombo, Sri Lanka currently focusing on a comparative study of Nigeria and Sri Lanka, in relation to political leadership and violent internal conflict management. Mr. Biu is also a lecturer attached to the Dept of Political Science at the Federal University Wukari, Nigeria. His research interests straddle public administration, development studies and local government studies. Daneshan Casie-Chetty is a retired career diplomat, and has served in numerous positions including as the former Head of the Mission of Sri Lanka to the EC and Ambassador to several countries such as France, Germany, Belgium and Indonesia. He is currently the Director/Consultant at the Office for National Unity and Reconcliation (ONUR) and former Executive Director of the South Asia Policy & Research Institute. He is also the current Chairman of the Board of Directors of the International Centre for Ethnic Studies. Mr. Casie-Chetty is an alumnus of the University of Peradeniya. Shanti Casie-Chetty is the author of Anita Dickman’s Cookery Course and the daughter of the talented cook, Anita Dickman; who was widely recognized as a master of the culinary art for over 20 year, and cookery courses in many parts of the island. Mrs Casie- Chetty, is also a cookery teacher by profession. She accompanied her spouse; a career foreign services officer, on his foreign assignments, mastering the various cuisines of India, Indonesia, Belgium and Germany. She further has substantial experience in promoting Sri Lanka’s diversity and image through her cooking. Indrajit Coomaraswamy is an internationally recognised Sri Lankan economist. He was an official with the Central Bank of Sri Lanka from 1973-1989. He worked in the Economic Research, Statistics and Bank Supervision Divisions. From 1981-89 he worked at the Ministry of Finance and Planning. From 1990-2009, Dr. Coomaraswamy worked with the Commonwealth Secretariat. During that time, he held the positions inter alia, of Director, Economic Affairs Division and Deputy-Director, Secretary-General's Office. He was subsequently Interim Director, Social Transformation Programme Division, Commonwealth Secretariat (January-July 2010). He completed his 2 undergraduate degree at Cambridge University and obtained his Doctorate from the University of Sussex. Radhika Coomaraswamy was the first UN Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women (1994-2003) and subsequently served as the UN Under-Secretary General and the Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General on Children and Armed Conflict (2006- 2012). Her career includes appointments as Chairperson of the Sri Lankan Human Rights Commission (2003-2006) and Global Professor at the Faculty of Law, New York University. Dr Coomaraswamy began her career as a constitutional lawyer and has written two books on the constitutional process in Sri Lanka and on the role of the Judiciary in plural societies. Dr. Coomaraswamy received her BA from Yale University, her JD from Columbia University, and her LLM from Harvard University. Channa Daswatte (tbc) is a well known Sri Lankan architect, both locally as well as abroad. He is currently a partner of MICD Associates, and has co-authored a book on architecture titled, “Sri Lankan Style” along with Dominic Sansoni. He obtained his BA in Architecture from the University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka and went on to further studies at Bartlett School at University College London. Mr Daswatte is a member of the Board of Trustees of the Geoffrey Bawa Trust, and was also an initial juniors of the late Geoffery Bawa’s firm of architects. Gihan de Chickera is a cartoonist, actor, and teacher. He works as a cartoonist for one of the leading daily newspapers of Sri Lanka, and won best cartoonist of the year in 2012. He is also a lecturer in Language in the University of Colombo, and a founding member of Stages Theatre Group, where he contributes mainly as an actor, but also handles sound and publicity-related work. He additionally acts in both Sinhala and English theatre, and was a cast member in the film Machan. Senaka de Silva has been a man of many trades, including, craft designer, couturier, costume designer, choreographer, and interior designer. Senaka has worked as a consultant designer for the Ministry of Textile Industry Development, the National Handicrafts Board of Sri Lanka, and the Sri Lanka Cooperative Textile Union Limited. His current passion is working with craftsmen and master weavers from all provinces in Sri Lanka, both to revive the country’s dying traditional arts and handicrafts, and encourage it as a potential avenue for livelihood-making. 3 Nirmal Ranjith Dewasiri is Senior lecturer and Head of the Department of History, University of Colombo. His research interests include impact of European colonialism, ethno-religious nationalism, radical political movements and post-colonial state building in Sri Lanka. Among his publications are ‘History’ after the War: Historical Consciousness in the Collective Sinhala-Buddhist Psyche in Post-War Sri Lanka (ICES, 2013) and The Adaptable Peasant Agrarian Society in Western Sri Lanka Under Dutch Rule, 1740-1800, (Leiden: Brill, 2008). Dr Dewasiri has received his BA (1991) and MPhil (2002) in History from University of Colombo, Sri Lanka and PhD from Leiden University, the Netherlands in 2007. Kanak Mani Dixit is publisher of Himal Khabarpatrika and editor of Himal Southasian. He has been a journalist since finishing high school in Lalitpur in 1971. He did his college in Kathmandu, law in Delhi, and masters (international affairs and journalism) in New York. He taught law briefly at Tribhuvan University, and worked at the United Nations in New York between 1982 and 1990. Since then, he has pioneered the field of Southasian journalism while immersing himself in Nepali-language media. Over the course of the late 1990s and early 2000s, he became involved in civil rights amidst the Maoist insurgency and King Gyanendra’s autocracy, and was active in the People’s Movement of 2006. Since then, Dixit has been involved in a campaign to roll back violence and work to ensure the promulgation of a democratic constitution. He also works in disability, public transport, archiving, and architectural and environmental preservation. As a children’s author, his most popular work is the much-translated Adventures of a Nepali Frog, Dixit is also translator of Bishweshor Prasad Koirala’s Atmabrittanta: Late Life Recollections, and in Fall 2009 he came out with Dekheko Muluk (The Country Witnessed), a Nepali- language work that addresses the violence and political upheavals of the previous fifteen years.