Professor Wimal Dissanayake, Sri Lanka’s first professor of mass communication and a pioneering scholar of Asian communication theory, has died in Hawaii. He was 86.
Born on Sept. 6, 1939, in Kurunegala, Dissanayake was an alumnus of Trinity College, Kandy. He earned his undergraduate degree from the University of Peradeniya before pursuing postgraduate studies at the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Cambridge.
Dissanayake played a pioneering role in introducing mass communication as an academic discipline in Sri Lanka through the University of Kelaniya, where he became the founding head of the Department of Mass Communication.
He was widely recognized as a creative writer, literary critic and leading scholar on Asian cinema and Asian communication theory. Throughout his academic career, he authored numerous books and publications on communication and cultural studies.
Dissanayake also served as head of the Institute for Culture and Communication at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. (Newswire)