BA (Colombo) MA ( Lancaster) MPhil (Peradeniya) PhD ( Cambridge)

Professor & Head / Department of Sinhala, University of Colombo

Tel. 0094112500453

sandagomi@sinh.cmb.ac.lk

sandagomic@yahoo.com

BIOGRAPHY

Professor Sandagomi Coperahewa was educated at S. Thomas’ College, Mount Lavinia where he won many prizes for his academic excellence. He entered the University of Colombo and read for a Special Degree in Sinhala and graduated with a BA First Class Honours in 1996. At the university also he ‘topped the batch’ at the final examination and won Niel Bandaranaike Prize and M. B. Ariyapala award for the best academic performance. Soon after the graduation, he was recruited as a temporary Assistant Lecturer and later as a Lecturer in Sinhala (1999) at the Department of Sinhala.

Attracted to modern linguistics, Coperahewa continued his research interest in language studies and obtained his MA (Distinction) in Language Studies from Lancaster University, UK under the auspices of a Commonwealth Scholarship.  After completing his MPhil in Sinhala at the University of Peradeniya, Coperahewa proceeded to the UK to complete his doctoral studies at the University of Cambridge under patronage of an ORS Award and Cambridge Commonwealth Trust Scholarship. He obtained his PhD in South Asian Studies from Cambridge in 2009 for the dissertation titled ‘The Politics of Language in Colonial Sri Lanka, 1900 – 1948’.

Returning to Colombo after his postgraduate studies, Coperahewa continued his task of teaching courses on Sinhala language and sociolinguistics at the Faculty of Arts. He introduced several course units to the department based on his postgraduate training in language and sociolinguistics. His main teaching areas are language and communication, sociolinguistics, modern Sinhala usage and academic writing. He was promoted to the post of Senior Lecturer in 2005 and Professor in 2013.

As an academic, Professor Coperahewa was instrumental in setting up new centres and study programmes for the University of Colombo. He was the Founder Director of the Centre for Contemporary Indian Studies (CCIS) a multidisciplinary research centre devoted to contemporary Indian Studies in Sri Lanka. As the founder Co-ordinator of MA in Sinhala he contributed towards introducing a new taught Masters programme in Sinhala. As an active teacher in the Faculty of Arts, Professor Coperahewa held many positions such as Student Counsellor, Senior Treasurer, Academic Warden and Activity Coordinator | IRQUE Project. In 2018, Coperahewa was appointed as the Chair of the Annual Research Symposium of the University of Colombo. He was appointed Head of the Department of Sinhala, University of Colombo in 2019.

Professor Coperahewa’s main research areas are modern Sinhala usage, sociology of Sinhala language, social history of Sinhala and language policy planning. He has authored twelve books and several scholarly articles related to Sinhala language, grammar, communication and language policy planning in Sri Lanka. As an expert on Sinhala Language, Professor Coperahewa provides consultancies to many government institutions on various issues related to Sinhala usage, grammar and language policy planning. Apart from his main research areas, Professor Coperahewa actively engages in various research and collaborative projects related to Rabindranath Tagore’s reception in Sri Lanka.