CONFERENCE CHAIR & COMMITTEE

Prof. Anura Manatunga

Senior Professor in Archaeology
Department of Archaeology
Director of the Centre for Heritage Studies
University of Kelaniya
Sri Lanka.

Prof. Anura Manatunga is a Senior Professor in Archaeology at the Department of Archaeology and the Director of the Centre for Heritage Studies, University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka. He has been working at the teaching faculty of the University of Kelaniya since 1986 and was the Head of the Department of Archaeology of the University during 1996-2001. He was the consultant and Director of the Polonnaruva World Heritage site project under the Central Cultural Fund of Sri Lanka from 1999-2014. Prof. Manatunga is a Founder member and Fellow of the Sri Lanka Council of Archaeologists. He was an Honorary Librarian of the Royal Asiatic Society of Sri Lanka, Senate Member of the Buddhist and Pali University of Sri Lanka and member of the Board of Governors of the Postgraduate Institute of Archaeology of the University of Kelaniya. He is a member of the Advisory Committee of the Department of Archaeology, Government of Sri Lanka and working as a consultant or a resource person in various institutions related to Heritage in Asia. Professor Manatunga is the Founder and General Secretary of the International Association for Asian Heritage [IAAH] which is one of the promising academic associations in the field of Heritage studies in the region.

Prof. Dilip K Chakrabarti

 Emeritus professor of South Asian Archaeology,

Cambridge University
United Kingdom

Emeritus professor of South Asian Archaeology, Cambridge University, Dilip K Chakrabarti (1941) held tenured appointments in the universities of Calcutta ( 1965-77), Delhi ( 1977-1990), Visvabharati(1980-81) and Cambridge( 1990-2008). He held visiting professorship in Jahangirnagar University, Bangladesh (1988-90) and scholarships, grants and fellowships  in  Calcutta University, Churchill  College, Wolfson College and Clare Hall in Cambridge, Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities of Edinburgh University, British Institute of Persian Studies, Tehran,  JDR 3^rd Fund New York, Allahabad University, Maison de l’homme, Paris , and Asia Centre , University of New England, Australia. In Cambridge University he is the first person to be promoted to professorship in the field of ancient Indian history and archaeology.

His published research has covered the following  themes : early historic urban growth in India ;  history of Indian archaeology (till 1947 and from 1947 to the present);  the early Indian  use of iron and copper and its alloys ;  external trade of the Indus civilization ; antiquities of Kangra ;  archaeology of eastern India : Chhotanagpur plateau and West Bengal ; ancient Bangladesh ; archaeological geography of the lower and upper Ganga plain ; the problem of the Sarasvati river and archaeological geography of Haryana and Panjab ; socio-politics of the ancient Indian past ;  the routes which linked the Ganga plain with the Deccan ; the ancient routes of the Deccan and the south; geopolitics of ancient India  ; and ancient Indian borderlands and boundaries from Baluchistan to Arakan Yoma. His current research is on the ancient history of Rajasthan – research developments, epigraphical evidence on the foci of political power , and issues. He has authored (co-authored in two cases) 29 books ( 1 in press) and edited/coedited 13 more ( 3 in press). In addition, he has published  about 200 articles and reviews.

He is the editor-in-chief (since 2015) of the Indian Historical Review published by the Indian Council of Historical Research and on the editorial board of  the journal National Security published by the Vivekananda International Foundation, Delhi. He is also the main editor of the 11-volume series on the history of ancient India which is sponsored by the Vivekananda International Foundation and Aryan Books International.