Judges Profiles

Jayantha Dhanapala is a former United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Disarmament Affairs (1998-2003) and a former Ambassador of Sri Lanka to the USA (1995-7) and to the UN Office in Geneva (1984-87).

He is currently the 11th President of the Nobel Peace Prize-winning Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs, Deputy Chairman of the Governing Board of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) and on several other advisory boards of international bodies.

As a Sri Lankan diplomat, Dhanapala served in London, Beijing, Washington D.C., New Delhi and Geneva and represented Sri Lanka at several international conferences chairing many of them including the historic NPT Review and Extension Conference of 1995. He was Director of the UN Institute for Disarmament Research (UNIDIR) from 1987-92.

Dhanapala obtained an honours degree in English from the University of Ceylon, Peradeniya and a M.A. in International Studies from the American University, Washington D.C. He has also received many international awards and honorary doctorates, has published five books and several articles in international journals and lectured widely. He speaks Sinhala, English, Chinese and French.

Lynn Ockersz is a senior journalist with over three decades of experience. He has served in several Sri Lankan English newspapers since 1982 in substantive capacities, including that of Chief Editor. His areas of specialisation as a journalist have been wide-ranging and include international affairs, the arts, business and ethnic politics and Sri Lanka’s national question.

General articles and weekly columns have been his principal modes of commentary over the years. He holds a Special Degree in English with Sinhala a subsidiary from the University of Kelaniya, and a Post Graduate Diploma in International Affairs from the Bandaranaike Centre for International Studies, Colombo. Ockersz is also a Press Fellow of Wolfson College Cambridge.

He is Visiting Lecturer in Journalism at the University of Colombo and is a member of the Board of Studies of the Bandaranaike Centre for International Studies. A poet in his leisure hours, he has brought out two collections of poetry.      

Sivamohan Sumathy holds a doctorate from the Washington State University, is Senior Lecturer in the Department of English, University of Peradeniya, and currently its Head of Department. She has published and presented on Postcolonial Literature and Theory, Women’s Movements in Sri Lanka, and Performing Arts (theatre and film).

She is the author of Thin Veils: In the Shadow of the Gun & Wicked Witch Performing Act/ivism, Militants, Militarism and the Crisis of (Tamil) Nationalism, and like myth and mother: a political autobiography in poetry and prose.  

She has also translated others’ work from Tamil to English. Sumathy has written and directed numerous plays which have been performed in several locations locally and internationally.  She co-scripted the docu-feature ‘In Search of a Road’ which premiered at the Singapore International Film Festival. Her first short film ‘Piralayam’ (Upheaval) was preselected at the Annual Film Without Frontiers of Barcelona in 2005.

Her first feature film, ‘Here and Now’, received an honourable mention grant from the US-based Global Film Initiative. Most recently, Sumathy was awarded the Premchand Fellowship 2011 from the National Academy of Letters in India.