BIO

Dr. Ajantha Sisira Kumara is currently attached to the Department of Public Administration, University of Sri Jayewardenepura-Sri Lanka as a Professor in Public Economics. He received his Ph.D in Public Economics in 2011 from the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies (GRIPS), Tokyo. In 2004, he joined the Department of Public Administration, University of Sri Jayewardenepura where he served as Head of the Department from 2012 to 2015. Dr. Sisira Kumara has been involved in many collaborative research projects funded by the Australian Government. In 2014, he was awarded the Australia Award Fellowship (AAF) to conduct research on patterns, determinants, and consequences of out-of-pocket healthcare expenditure of Sri Lankan households which was host by the Monash University-Australia. Dr. Sisira Kumara was also awarded the “Endeavour Postdoctoral Research Fellowship” by the Australian Government in 2018 to continue research work at the same University. He has published the research outcome of those projects in reputed refereed academic journals including, Journal of Development Studies, Social Science & Medicine, Economics & Human Biology, Health Policy and Planning, and so forth. One of his research papers published in the journal of Social Science & Medicine won the President’s award in 2019 at the ceremony of President’s Award for Scientific Research organized by the National Research Council (NRC)-Sri Lanka.