Shihan de Silva Jayasuriya

Shihan is a Research Associate of the Centre for African Studies and a Discretionary Associate of the Faculty of History, University of Oxford.

Her expertise ranges from academia to advocacy in higher education institutions and international NGOs – UNESCO, UN and ICOMOS. She is the winner of a distinguished Rama Watamull Collaborative Lecture Series Student Equity, Excellence and Diversity Award from the Center for South Asian Studies, University of Hawaii, Manoa.  Shihan is an elected Fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain & Ireland and also of the National Academy of Sciences of Sri Lanka. 

Shihan co-edited with Richard Pankhurst, OBE, The African Diaspora in the Indian Ocean (2003) (Africa World Press, New Jersey) which has become a pedagogical work in the field.  This was followed up with Uncovering the History of Africans in Asia (2008). Her own monographs include The African Diaspora in Asian Trade Routes and Cultural Memories (2010) and African Identity in Asia:  Cultural Effects of Forced Migration (2009).

Shihan guest edited four volumes for African & Asian Studies (Leiden: Brill) - “African Migration: Understanding Trends and Traditions” (2011), “Migrants and the Making of Indian Ocean Cultures” (2009), “Invisible Africans: Hidden Communities in Asia” (2007) and “The African Diaspora in Asia: Historical Gleanings” (2006), for Musiké (The Hague: Semar Publishers) (2006) entitled “Sounds of Identity:  The Music of Afro-Asians” and De l'Afrique à l'Extrême orient‎. Cahiers des Anneaux de la Mémoire 9  (Nantes) (2006). Currently she is guest editing “African Mobilities and Heritage in the Indian Ocean World” for the Journal of African Diaspora Archaeology & Heritage.  This follows her 2015, guest edited thematic issue for the same journal on “Africans in India”.

Editorial boards: Journal of African Diaspora Archaeology and Heritage,  An Encyclopedia of

the African Diaspora, Information, Society and Justice,  and African Diaspora and Cambridge

Scholars Publishing.

Shihan is currently working on a collaborative project on the Malāz̲ al-Kalimāt (“the refuge of words”) of Muḥammad Vājid Alī Shāh, last king of Avadh (Oudh or Oude) in today’s State of Uttar Pradesh, India.

Recent Publications:

• De Silva Jayasuriya, Shihan and Stefan Halikowski Smith. 2025. Global Portuguese: Literary, Historical, Sociolinguistic and Anthropological Approaches.  Leiden: Brill Academic Publishers

• De Silva Jayasuriya, Shihan and Beheroze Shroff. 2023. Legacies of Trade and Empire:  Breaking Silences.  Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing

• De Silva Jayasuriya, Shihan, Mariana Pinto Leitão Pereira and Gregory Hansen. 2022. Sustaining Support for Intangible Cultural Heritage.  Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing