Prof Arjuna Parakrama is a poet, scholar, and an activist. He has served Sri Lankan and international academia for over thirty years and he has also done important work with the UN and other major international foundations. He was the recipient of prestigious fellowships from the Carnegie Council for Ethics and International Affairs, and the United States Institute of Peace and a research grant from the Guggenheim Foundation.  He served as  the  Head of the English Department and the Dean of the Faculty of Arts at the University of Colombo, Senior Professor of English and Chair of the Department of English, University of Peradeniya and the Director of the Centre for the Study of Human Rights.  As an inter-disciplinary scholar working on critical discourse studies, subalternity, human rights and development, and radical sociolinguistics, he is the author of many essays, monographs and books, such as Language and Rebellion (London: Katha 1990) and De-Hegemonizing Language Standards: Learning from (Post) Colonial Englishes about “English” (London: Macmillan, 1995).