Rajiva Wijesinha
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The Honorable Rajiva Wijesinha රජීව විජේසිංහ MP |
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| Member of the Sri Lanka Parliament for National List |
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In office 2010–2015 |
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| State Minister of Higher Education | |
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In office 12 January 2015 – 17 February 2015 |
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| President | Maithripala Sirisena |
| Prime Minister | Ranil Wickremesinghe |
| Personal details | |
| Born |
16 May 1954 Sri Lanka |
| Nationality | Sri Lankan |
| Political party | Liberal Party of Sri Lanka |
| Alma mater | University College, Oxford; Corpus Christi College, Oxford |
| Occupation | Author |
| Website | rajivawijesinha |
Rajiva Wijesinha, MA, DPhil (Sinhala: රජීව විජේසිංහ) (born 16 May 1954) is a Sri Lankan writer in English, distinguished for his political analysis as well as creative and critical work. An academic by profession for much of his working career, he was most recently Senior Professor of Languages at the University of Sabaragamuwa, Sri Lanka.
In June 2007 President Mahinda Rajapakse appointed him Secretary-General of the Sri Lankan Government Secretariat for Coordinating the Peace Process and in June 2008 he also became concurrently the Secretary to the Ministry of Disaster Management and Human Rights. The Peace Secretariat wound up in July 2009), and in February 2010 he resigned from the Ministry as well as the University, and became a member of parliament on the National List of the United People's Freedom Alliance following the General Election held in April 2010, following which he was appointed a member of parliament.
He belongs to the Liberal Party of Sri Lanka, and has served as its President and leader, and also as a Vice-President of Liberal International. He is currently Chair of the Council of Asian Liberals and Democrats and was re-elected leader of the Liberal Party Sri Lanka on the proposal of the previous leader following the Liberal Party Annual Congress of 2011. He has travelled widely, including as a Visiting Professor on the Semester at Sea Programme of the University of Pittsburgh, and has published Beyond the First Circle: Travels in the Second and Third Worlds.
Rajiva Wijesinha schooled at S Thomas' College, Mt Lavinia (which he later served as Sub-Warden, for a brief period), and won an Open Exhibition in Classics to University College, Oxford when he was 16. After his first degree, which also led to an MA in 1977, he moved to Corpus Christi College, Oxford as an E K Chambers Student (Edmund Kerchever Chambers), and obtained a BPhil degree in English, followed by a DPhil degree on the subject of Women and Marriage in the early Victorian novel. The thesis was subsequently published by the University Press of America under the title The Androgynous Trollope.
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