Sureshi M. Jayawardene, Ph.D.

Office: AL-369
Phone: (619) 594-6554
Email: [email protected]

Sureshi M. Jayawardene is an Africana social scientist specializing in the western Indian Ocean African diaspora. She received her Ph.D. in African American Studies from Northwestern University. Jayawardene holds an M.A. in African American Studies also from Northwestern, an M.A. in Ethnic Studies from San Francisco State University, and a B.A. in Global Studies and Women’s Studies from Concordia College. Her research and teaching interests include Africana geographies and epistemologies, diaspora, memory, expressive cultures, spirituality, Africana families and kinship formations, Black digital humanities, and research methods. She is currently working on a book combining ethnography, interviews, archival research, and content analyses with theories of diaspora, Pan-Africanism, Black Geographies, and Africana aesthetics to culturally situate her investigation into conceptions of selfhood and community among people of African descent in Sri Lanka. Her publications about South Asian Africana communities have appeared in the Journal of Black Studies and the Journal of African American Studies. Jayawardene is also a co-founder and currently co-directs the Afrometrics Research Institute.