Professor Wimal Dissanayake, the scholar who introduced mass communication as an academic discipline to Sri Lanka’s university system, has died.
A literary critic and writer as well as an academic, he was the founding figure behind the Department of Mass Communication at the University of Kelaniya and served as its first head of department, at a point when media and communication studies barely existed in the region.
From Kandy to Cambridge
Professor Dissanayake received his early education at Trinity College, Kandy, before entering the University of Ceylon, where he took an honours degree in Sinhala. He read Sinhala, Sanskrit and English for his first degree and was regarded as an independent intellectual produced by the Peradeniya school.
He went on to the University of Cambridge, where he completed a doctorate in English literature. In 1975 he won a fellowship that took him to the University of Pennsylvania for postdoctoral work in mass communication and cinema.
Hawaii and Hong Kong
In 1979 he was appointed to the University of Hawaii and moved abroad, holding a professorship in mass communication there. He also held an honorary professorship at the University of Hong Kong.
Across his career he wrote and edited extensively on communication theory, cultural studies, literature and Asian cinema, and was among the earliest Sri Lankan academics to establish an international reputation in the field.
