Professor Chitra Jayathilake (PhD)

Chitra Jayathilake is a professor in English at the Department of English and Linguistics, and a Faculty Member of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Sri Jayewardenepura, Sri Lanka.  

Chitra holds a PhD in English from the University of Keele, United Kingdom, an MA in TESL from the Postgraduate Institute of English of the Open University, an MA in Linguistics from the University of Kelaniya and a BA (Hons) in English from the University of Sri Jayewardenepura, Sri Lanka. Her research interests lie at the intersection of postcolonial literatures, especially postcolonial theatre, English and cultural studies, Second Language Acquisition and Teaching English as a Second Language (TESL).

Traversing postcolonial studies, cultural and English studies and theatre, Chitra carried out her PhD research on 'Biopolitics and Postcolonial Theatre’. She was the first candidate to earn an MA  from the PGIE  and  her thesis, broadly on Psycholinguistics, focused on Negative Evidence and classroom interactional feedback. Her two year research-based MA in Linguistics is within the domains of Sociolinguistics and Bilingualism; the thesis is specifically about code-switching in e-communication.

With over two decades of  lecturing experience at the Department of English and Linguistics, University of Sri Jayewardenepura, she has also occupied the managerial and administrative roles of Head of the Department, Coordinator of  the World Bank Project (IRQUE), and Chair of IRCHSS (International Research Conference on Humanities and Social Sciences in 2016. She is currently the Coordinator of  postgraduate programmes in English Literature and the Co-coordinator of the MA in TESL ( Teaching English as a Second Language) programme at the University of Sri Jayewardenepura.

Chitra's service and contribution is also extended to the Examinations Department, Sri Lanka; Postgraduate Institute of English (PGIE); the National Institute of Education (NIE), Sri Lanka; Educational Publications Department, Sri Lanka and to Sri Lanka Institute of Advanced Technological  Education (SLIATE)  in her capacity as a professor.