About the Authors
Dr Ganeshan Wignaraja is the executive director of the Lakshman Kadirgamar Institute of International Relations and Strategic Studies (LKI) in Sri Lanka. He concurrently serves as a member of the Monetary Policy Consultative Committee of the Central Bank of Sri Lanka. He is also a senior research associate at the Overseas Development Institute in London. In a career spanning over 25 years in the UK and Asia, Ganeshan has had senior roles in international organizations (director of research at the ADB Institute in Tokyo) and the private sector (global head of trade and competitiveness at Maxwell Stamp PLC in London). Ganeshan has a DPhil in economics from Oxford University and has published 18 books on international trade, economic development and macroeconomics.
Dr Dinusha Panditaratne is a non-resident fellow of the LKI. She previously served as executive director of LKI (2015–18). Prior to her appointment at the LKI, Dr Panditaratne was an assistant professor at the Faculty of Law at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and a visiting fellow at the University of Hong Kong. She is an attorney admitted to practice in the State of New York and previously worked at Milbank LLP. Dr Panditaratne is a member of the Asia-Pacific Leadership Network for Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament (APLN) headquartered in Seoul, and an adviser to Verité Research, a private think-tank in Colombo. She is also a non-executive director of a leading bank and two civil society organizations in Sri Lanka. She received her first degree in law from Oxford University and a masters and a doctorate from Yale Law School.
Pabasara Kannangara has worked at the LKI since 2017 and is a research associate in the Global Economy team. Her research and capacity-building work covers international trade, maritime affairs and political economy issues related to Sri Lanka and Asia, as well as statistical data analysis. She has published research on the development of sea ports in India and Sri Lanka, Indian Ocean dynamics and Chinese investment. She is currently working on research related to the macroeconomic outlook for Asia, mapping maritime-led growth in the Commonwealth region, Sri Lanka’s transition from lower-middle to upper-middle-income status, and economic diplomacy. Pabasara completed her BSc (Hons) in economics at the University of Warwick.
Divya Hundlani is an independent researcher and academic writer in the public policy field. Divya has worked at Singapore’s Earth Observatory Unit, where she studied the economic impact of reconstruction in post-disaster environments. She subsequently joined the LKI as a research fellow, where she worked on Sri Lanka’s foreign policy issues related to economics, environmental studies and international governance. Divya completed a masters of public policy at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore in 2014 and received a bachelor’s degree in economics from the University of Miami in the US.