Prof. Anton Piyarathne

Anton Piyarathne currently serves as a professor and the head of the department of Social Studies (SSD) of the Open University of Sri Lanka (the OUSL). He teaches Anthropology and Sociology for both undergraduates and postgraduate students in his university. He earned his PhD from the Department of Anthropology of Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia in 2014. Anton has recently published “Constructing Commongrounds: Everyday Lifeworlds Beyond Politicised Ethnicities in Sri Lanka”, which is his third monograph discusses ethnicity and ethnic relationships in Sri Lanka. Apart from ethnicity and ethnic boundary negotiations he has been interested in many areas including identity and politics of Indian Origin Plantation Tamil community, ethnoreligious nationalisms, nation building and citizenship, national integration and disintegration, conflict and peacemaking, religious pluralism and religious syncretism, development and resettlement, social stratification systems and existential realities of everyday social lifeworlds of the different groups in Sri Lanka.