International terrorism expert Gunaratna to speak in Colombo

Tuesday, 10 May 2011 00:03 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

Shippers’ Academy, Colombo has organized a top level talk by international terrorism expert Prof. Rohan Gunaratna on May 23rd from 3.00 p.m. to 5.00 p.m. at the Ceylon Chamber of Commerce.

He will speak on “Global terrorism- the threat and response - Post Bin Laden, Post Prabahkaran and Developments in the Middle East.”

Prof Gunaratna (born 1961) is an international terrorism expert. He is the head of the International Centre for Political Violence and Terrorism Research (ICPVTR)] at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. By its size, ICPVTR is one of the largest counterterrorism research and training centres in the world. A Member of the Steering Committee of George Washington University's Homeland Security Policy Institute, Prof Gunaratna is also Senior Fellow both at Fletcher School for Law and Diplomacy's Jebsen Centre for Counter Terrorism Studies and the Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism, Oklahoma. A former Senior Fellow at the United States Military Academy's Combating Terrorism Centre at West Point, he holds a masters in international peace studies from Notre Dame, US, where he was Hesburgh Scholar and a doctorate in international relations from St Andrews, Scotland, where he was British Chevening Scholar.

Author and editor of 12 books including “Inside Al Qaeda: Global Network of Terror” (Columbia University Press), an international bestseller, Gunaratna is also the lead author of Jane’s Counter Terrorism, a handbook for counter terrorism practitioners. His latest book with Michael Chandler, former Chairman of the UN Monitoring Group into the Mobility, Weapons and Finance is "Countering Terrorism: Can We Meet the Threat of Global Violence?” He also serves on the editorial boards of "Studies in Conflict and Terrorism" and "Terrorism and Political Violence," the leading academic journals in the field and on the advisory council of “Policing, Intelligence and Counter Terrorism.”