Jayadeva Uyangoda (born 13 September 1950) is a Sri Lankan

political scientist Political science is the scientific study of politics. It is a social science dealing with systems of governance and Power (social and political), power, and the analysis of political activities, political philosophy, political thought, polit ...

. He is a constitutional expert in

Sri Lanka Sri Lanka, officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, also known historically as Ceylon, is an island country in South Asia. It lies in the Indian Ocean, southwest of the Bay of Bengal, separated from the Indian subcontinent, ...

. Jayadewa Uyangoda was a

leftist Left-wing politics describes the range of political ideologies that support and seek to achieve social equality and egalitarianism, often in opposition to social hierarchy either as a whole or of certain social hierarchies. Left-wing politi ...

student leader and a member of the

Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna The Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP; , PLF) is a Marxist–Leninist political party in Sri Lanka. The party was formerly a revolutionary movement and was involved in two armed uprisings against the government of Sri Lanka: once in 1971 JVP ins ...

(JVP) movement in the 1970s. He was arrested following the aborted insurrection of 1971 and was imprisoned by the courts. Later, he was released with other JVP rebels on an unconditional pardon by the newly appointed Jayawardena Regime in late 1970s. Having released from the jail, he did his doctoral research in the University of Hawaii on ''Nationalism and State Formation in Bangladesh''. He remains one of Sri Lanka's most veteran commentators on ethnic conflict and human rights. He worked with Neelan Tiruchelvam in drafting the model constitution in 1999. , Uyangoda is a professor in the Department of Political Science and Public Policy at the

University of Colombo The University of Colombo (informally Colombo University or UoC) is a Public University, public research university located primarily in Colombo, Sri Lanka. It is the oldest institution of modern higher education in Sri Lanka. Specialised in t ...

, and founder-director of the Centre for Policy Research and Analysis, Colombo. He is a former chairman of the Sri Lanka Foundation in

Colombo Colombo, ( ; , ; , ), is the executive and judicial capital and largest city of Sri Lanka by population. The Colombo metropolitan area is estimated to have a population of 5.6 million, and 752,993 within the municipal limits. It is the ...

. Uyangoda was the founder editor and later co-editor of '' Pravada'', an academic journal in English that focuses on Sri Lanka and South Asia. He continues to write prolifically in Sinhala and English.

References

1944 births Living people Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna members Sri Lankan political scientists Sinhalese people Sri Lankan academics Academic staff of the University of Colombo Sinhalese writers {{SriLanka-academic-bio-stub