Rohan Bastin is an Australian anthropologist who teaches at Deakin University. He has conducted research in Sri Lanka since 1984 and is the author of The Domain of Constant Excess: Plural Worship at the Munnesvaram Temples in Sri Lanka (Berghahn Books, 2002). In 2009 he published “Royal Science and Civil War in Sri Lanka: A Comment on S. Goonatilake” in Contributions to Indian Sociology (vol. 43, no. 3, pp. 443-67). 

Giyani Venya de Silva worked as a Research Assistant at ICES from August 2009 to July 2010. She graduated from Yale University with a BA in Anthropology in May 2009, and is currently reading for the MPhil in Social Anthropology at the University of Oxford. Her research interests include issues of identity and ethnicity, the politics of representation, material culture and museum studies. 

Ameena Hussein has written two collections of short stories and one novel. She was awarded the State Literary Prize in 2005 and her novel The Moon in the Water was long listed for the first ever Man Asian Literary Prize and the Dublin Impac Prize in 2010. She is the co-founder of the Perera Hussein Publishing House, which publishes cutting-edge Sri Lankan fiction.

Kalana Senaratne is currently a postgraduate-research student at the Faculty of Law, University of Hong Kong. He obtained LL.B. and LL.M. degrees from the University of London, and has worked briefly at the UNDP (East Timor), the Sri Lankan Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Peace Secretariat and the Weeramantry International Centre for Peace Education and Research (WICPER)

Tissa Jayatilaka is the Executive Director of the United States-Sri Lanka Fulbright Commission and a Visiting Lecturer in English at the University of Sri Jayewardenepura, Sri Lanka. He is a frequent commentator on domestic and international political and literary themes.

Anupama Mohan is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of English at University of Nevada, Reno. She has published articles in the broad fields of postcolonial studies, women's literature, and critical and literary theory. She is currently working on a monograph on the intersecting literary histories of twentieth century India and Sri Lanka, of which her article in Nethra Review is a part.

Michael Roberts taught at the Department of History, University of Peradeniya in 1961-2 and from 1966-75.  He secured an Alexander von Humboldt Fellowship to Germany in 1975 and subsequently joined the Department of Anthropology at the University of Adelaide in 1977.  His major works include Elites, Nationalisms and the Nationalist Movement in British Ceylon, in Documents of the Ceylon National Congress, Vol.1, Caste Conflict and Elite Formation: The Rise of a Karava Elite in Sri Lanka, 1500-1931, People in Between: The Burghers and the Middle Class in the Transformations within Sri Lanka, 1790s-1980s.Vol.1, Exploring Confrontation. Sri Lanka: Politics, Culture and History, Sinhala Consciousness in the Kandyan Period, 1590s-1818 and Crosscurrents: Sri Lanka and Australia at Cricket.     He has also published numerous articles and edited several works.

Sarath Rajapatirana is Vice President (Research) of the Institute of Economic and Institutional Development. Previously he was with the World Bank for twenty-five years, where he was an Economic Adviser, a Division Chief for trade and industry for Latin America and the Director and Team Leader of the 1987 World Development Report. Prior to joining the World Bank, he was with the Central Bank of Sri Lanka where he was Chief of Money and Banking Research. He is the author/co-author of six books and more than forty papers published in refereed journals.

Kalinga Tudor Silva holds a BA degree from the University of Peradeniya and obtained his PhD from Monash University, Australia. Currently, he serves as the Executive Director of the International Centre for Ethnic Studies. He is presently on sabbatical leave from the University of Peradeniya where he held the positions of Senior Professor of Sociology and Dean, Faculty of Arts. He has published widely in Sri Lanka and abroad on various aspects of Sri Lankan society, including social stratification, poverty, health issues, social conflict and social policies.

Ramya Chamalie Jirasinghe’s books include Rhythm of the Sea and Trinity. She was a runner-up to the UK Guardian Orange First Words Prize of 2009 and was shortlisted for the Gratiaen Prize for her manuscripts of poetry in 1998 and 2007. She won the joint prize of the English Writer’s Cooperative’s Short Story and Poetry Competition in 1997. Her work has been featured in the TimesOnline UK 2009 selection of contemporary war poetry, the Tipton Poetry Journal, The Poetry Journal, Osprey and Channels. She holds a MA in Comparative Literature from SOAS, University of London. Ramya works at the US-Sri Lanka Fulbright Commission.

Laban Carrick Hill is the author of more than 30 books of fiction, nonfiction, poetry and children’s books. His Harlem Stomp!: A Cultural History of The Harlem Renaissance was a 2004 National Book Award Finalist in the U.S. His most recent book, Dave the Potter was published this year by Little, Brown & Company. He is the director of the Ghana Poetry Project, a nonprofit based in Ghana and the U.S. promoting literary culture in Africa.

Indika Edirisinghe is a Project Coordinator and Researcher at the Centre for Women’s Research (CENWOR), Colombo. A BSc. (Agriculture) graduate of the University of Peradeniya, she has completed her Masters in Development Studies at the University of Colombo. Her broad research interests include youth, employment, urban poverty and gender. She has conducted macro level and field based research on issues concerning female factory workers and women in decision making positions.

Sasanka Perera is Professor of Anthropology and Head of the Department of Sociology at University of Colombo. His research interests include politics of development, visual culture, memory and spatial politics. At present, he is working on a book on the politics of memory in Sri Lanka. He is the Editor of the South Asia Journal for Culture and the Sinhala language cultural studies journal, Patitha, and serves on the editorial board of its Tamil language counterpart, Panuwal. He writes poetry primarily in the Sinhala language.

Capt. Elmo Jayawardena won the Gratiaen Prize in 2001 for Sam’s Story and the State Literary Award for The Last Kingdom of Sinhalay in 2005, and was short-listed for the Singapore Literary Award in 2008 for Rainbows in Braille. He is the Founder President of CandleAid Lanka, a humanitarian organisation working with “people in need”. He has been an aviator for more than 40 years, and currently trains pilots for the Boeing company. 

Sumith Chaaminda completed his Masters Degree in Political Science under an exchange program between the University of Colombo and the University of Oslo in 2009. He has worked as a lecturer in Political Science at University of Colombo, University of Ruhuna and University of Sabaragamuwa, and is currently a Research Associate at the International Centre for Ethnic Studies, Colombo.

Dilshan Boange graduated from University of Colombo with a BA Degree in English (Honours), and holds a Diploma and a Higher Diploma in International Relations awarded by the Bandaranaike Centre for International Studies, Colombo. His academic interests include comparative literature, inter-textual studies, modern lyrical prose/fiction, and contemporary Sri Lankan English fiction. His forthcoming publication is titled Conciousness: The Writer’s Primary Pen.

Frances Bulathsinghala, for much of her career, was a journalist covering political and social issues, with a focus on the ethnic conflict. She has moved away from full time journalism to developmental research. She writes short stories and poetry, and has an interest in script writing.

Paul Melo e Castro is Leverhulme Early Career Fellow in the Department of Spanish, Portuguese and Latin American Studies at the University of Leeds, where he is undertaking a project looking into the twentieth-century Goan short story in Portuguese.

Dushyanthi Mendis is a Senior Lecturer at the Department of English, University of Colombo. She has an MA in Linguistics from Ohio University and a Phd in Linguistics from the University of Michigan. Her literature teaching is confined to her Department’s first year introductory Poetry course, and a course on Sri Lankan Literature and Language taught at Justus Liebig University, Germany, while on a DAAD Fellowship. Her primary research interests are sociolinguistics, discourse analysis and corpus linguistics.

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Regi Siriwardena (1922-2004), veteran journalist, literary and film critic, academic, translator, playwright, poet and novelist, was the Founding Editor of Nethra in 1984, the ICES journal which he edited until his demise. He read English at University College, Colombo under E. F. C. Ludowyk and Doric de Souza, graduating with a University of London degree. Regi founded the Department of English at the former Buddhist seat of higher learning, Vidyalankara University (now University of Kelaniya), and was the founder-secretary of the Civil Rights Movement of Sri Lanka. Working with Lester James Peries, he wrote the screenplays for the ground-breaking Sinhala films, Gamperaliya and Golu Hadawatha, while he worked towards the establishment of the National Film Corporation in 1971. His publications include Equality and the Religious Traditions of Asia (1987), Waiting for the Soldier (1989), To the Muse of Insomnia (1990), Poems and Selected Translations (1993), Octet: Collected Plays (1995), The Lost Lenore (1996), Among My Souvenirs (1997), Working Underground: The LSSP in Wartime (1999), and The Pure Water of Poetry (1999).

Nishan de Mel, A.B. Hons. (Harvard), M.Phil (Oxon), D.Phil (Oxon), is an Economist. He has held several senior policy and research appointments in Sri Lanka. He was a Member, Presidential Task Force on Health Reforms (1997); Member, National Steering Committee on Social Security (1998-2000); Member, Presidential Committee on Tobacco and Alcohol (1997-2000); and Member, Board of Directors of the Sri Lanka Foundation (1997-2000). He was a lecturer in Economics at Oxford University (2002-2007) and a researcher at the Institute of Policy Studies Sri Lanka (1996-2000). He served as Executive Director of the Sri Lanka Foundation Institute (2000) and Executive Director of the International Centre for Ethnic Studies (2009). Currently, he serves as Executive Director of Verité Research, Sri Lanka.

Chelva Kanaganayakam is Professor of English at the University of Toronto and Director, Centre for South Asian Studies. He has published several books including Structures of Negation: the Writings of Zulfikar Ghose, Configurations of Exile: South Asian Writers and their World, Dark Antonyms and Paradise: the Poetry of Rienzi Crusz, and Counterrealism and Indo-Anglian Fiction. He is also the editor of the recent ICES publication Arbiters of a National Imaginary: Essays on Sri Lanka - Festschrift for Professor Ashley Halpé.

Lakmali Jayasinghe is a first-class English Honours graduate of University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka, while she holds a Diploma in Higher Studies in French Language and Literature with Distinction awarded by the Alliance Française of Paris, and a Postgraduate Diploma in International Relations awarded by the Bandaranaike Centre for International Studies, Sri Lanka. Lakmali is a Researcher at ICES and the Managing Editor of Nethra Review, while she is a visiting lecturer at the Department of English, University of Peradeniya. Her research interests include comparative literature, gender studies, critical theory and cultural studies.