By Prema-chandra Athukorala, Australian National University and Sarath Rajapatirana, Advocata Institute, Colombo (formerly at the World Bank)
The distinguished economist Professor Sisira Kumara Jayasuriya, Sri Lanka-born and who spent much of his professional life in Australia, passed away on 18 February 2025, after a prolonged battle with cancer.
Sisira was a highly respected economist whose contributions to economics, ranging from macroeconomics to microeconomics, were wide and deep. Throughout his professional career, he maintained an abiding interest in studying the Sri Lankan economy and participating in the country’s economic policy debate.
Sisira was born 22 June 1946 into a middle-class academic family in Bandaragama. His parents were both schoolteachers. He was the second child in the family, with an older sister and a younger sister. All three siblings graduated from the leading university in the country, the University of Ceylon (later renamed Peradeniya University).
He was an old boy of Ananda College, just before the primary language of instruction in higher education in Sri Lanka was changed from English to Sinhala (and Tamil). He entered the University of Ceylon in 1965 as a student in the science stream but later decided to switch to social sciences to study economics, majoring in statistics—an extremely rare and bold decision at that university, where disciplines were traditionally rigid.
Dr. Piyasiri Wickramasekara, who was a young lecturer at the time in the Department of Economics at the time, reminisces about Sisira’s university days:
‘I had the rare privilege of teaching Sisira during his undergraduate days when he was in the small batch of students majoring in economics in the English medium. I always remember and admire him as an extremely bright and exceptional student who hardly took any notes during my lectures, while others were busy copying down every word I uttered. He was also about the only student in the group who never hesitated to interrupt me and ask questions during lectures. I had the confidence to ask him to convey to me privately what he thought of my teaching in my capacity as an assistant lecturer with little experience. I shall always remember Sisira’s engaging smile and friendly, pleasant disposition—his hallmark from his student days.’
Sisira was a political activist from his high school days. He was an active member of the student wing of the Lanka Sama Samaja Party (LSSP), the oldest communist (Trotskyist) party in the country. In 1968, when the LSSP leadership entered mainstream politics, Sisira joined a breakaway group of young LSSPers who formed the Trotskyist Revolutionary Communist League (RCL) (subsequently renamed the Socialist Equality Party), affiliated with the International Committee of the Fourth International. During his university days (and perhaps beyond), he was the chief editor of the party’s weekly newspaper, Kamkaru Mawatha (The Workers’ Path).
Sisira was a powerful and passionate speaker for the party, with a remarkable ability to directly quote Marx, Lenin, and Trotsky to debunk his political opponents.
Those of us who were at the University of Peradeniya during his time have vivid memories of the speeches he delivered under the famous ‘strike tree,’ using evocative and stirring language tinged with humour, complemented by sharp, deliberate hand movements to punctuate key points. Dr. Wickramasekara recalls that Sisira once remarked that he never planned to be an academic and expected to remain a full-time revolutionary.
After graduating in 1970 and spending short spells as an assistant lecturer in the same department and at the Rubber Research Institute, Sisira came to the Australian National University (ANU) in 1972 for post-graduate studies on Colombo Plan. He first enrolled in the Masters in Agricultural and Development Economics at the Development Studies Centre, Research School of Pacific Studies (RSPS).
When he soon became bored with the program’s course content, Professor Peter Lloyd arranged for him to enrol in more analytically rigorous courses in the Master’s programme in the Department of Economics. Upon completing his Master’s in 1973, Sisira was awarded an ANU scholarship for doctoral research. His doctoral thesis focused on the long-term investment decisions of rubber smallholders in Sri Lanka, set against the backdrop of emerging analytical literature on the investment behaviour of farmers engaged in perennial cash crops.
In 1978, he joined the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) in Los Baños, Philippines, as a Post-doctoral Fellow and was promoted to scientist/economist in 1980. After a five-year tenure at IRRI, he returned to the ANU in 1982 as a Research Fellow in the economics division of RSPS. Subsequently, he taught at La Trobe University (as Senior Lecturer, and then Reader) and at the University of Melbourne (as Associate Professor and Director of the Centre of Asian Studies), before joining the Department of Economics at Monash University as a Professor in 2010.
At Monash, Sisira played a pivotal role in founding and shaping the Centre for Development Economics and Sustainability (CDES) into a leading centre for cutting-edge interdisciplinary research, focusing on topics such as poverty alleviation, agricultural development, environmental sustainability, and the socio-economic impacts of globalization. Sisira’s vision and dedication fostered collaborations with leading academics, policymakers, and international organizations, ensuring that CDES research had a tangible impact on both policy and practice.
Sisira’s extensive external networks and engagements were instrumental in elevating CDES’s global profile. He forged strong partnerships with institutions such as the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, and various United Nations agencies, as well as universities and research centres across Asia, Africa, and beyond. His ability to bridge academia and practice was one of his greatest strengths. Sisira retired from Monash in 2022 but continued as an Adjunct Professor of Economics at CDES, leaving behind a lasting legacy of excellence and innovation.
Sisira was the quintessential applied economist, with a firm grounding in theory and analytical techniques. His research and policy advisory activities spanned trade, macroeconomics, environmental issues, and food policy in developing countries, with a multidisciplinary focus. His publications included six books and over fifty papers in multi-authored volumes and scholarly journals. Sisira regularly advised governments and international organizations on development policy, offering real-world insights, A great teacher, supervisor, and mentor, Sisira guided many doctoral students from various countries, including Australia, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Indonesia, and Vietnam.
No appreciation of Sisira’s contributions to economic academia would be complete without acknowledging the role he played in a major multicounty research project on The Macroeconomic Policies, Crises, and Growth in the Long-Run Experience of Developing Countries, undertaken by the World Bank under the principal authorship and guidance of Ian Little, Max Corden, and Richard Cooper (1986–1990).
Sisira played a key role as co-author of two of the seventeen in-depth country studies in the project—on Colombia and Sri Lanka—both of which were published as research monographs in their own right, in addition to contributing to the main volume, Boom, Crisis, and Adjustment: The Macroeconomic Experiences of Developing Countries by Ian Little, Max Corden, Richard Cooper and Sarath Rajapatirana (Oxford University Press). In addition to co-authoring the two country studies, Sisira quietly but effectively supported the Director of the project by revising several other country studies during his sabbatical at the School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University.
His other major international research projects included Agricultural Trade Liberalisation and Domestic Market Reforms in Indian Agriculture (2005–2015), in collaboration with the National Center for Applied Economic Research in New Delhi; Processed Food Exports from India and Thailand (2000–2005), in collaboration with Thammasat University, Thailand, and the Research Information System, India; and Land Degradation in Sri Lanka (1992–2000), in collaboration with the Ministry of Plantation Industries, Sri Lanka.
He was a frequent visitor to the Institute of Policy Studies in Colombo during its formative years. He worked closely with Dr. Saman Kelegama (Executive Director) and Dr. David Dunham (Resident Economist funded by the Dutch government) in developing the research profile and capabilities of the institute, helping it become a major multidisciplinary research centre in the South Asian region.
During the first Chandrika Kumaratunga regime (1994–1999), he worked closely with Dr. Lal Jayawardene, the main economic advisor to the government. He drafted the Economic Policy Statement of the Government of Sri Lanka (13 September 1994) when the new government came into power, though he was later disappointed by the sharp deviation of practice from the declared policy.
During his tenure at La Trobe University, he sponsored several students from Sri Lanka to undertake doctoral research under the ACIAR project on land degradation (mentioned above). He co-authored a major book on macroeconomic policy in Sri Lanka and several papers on key economic issues of the country, which have now become an integral part of its knowledge base.
Sisira was ethnically Sinhalese, the main ethnic group in Sri Lanka, but he always maintained a strong stance on the issues faced by the Tamil minority. He stood firm on the need to make amends for the suffering caused by majoritarian rule.
A final tribute to Professor Sisira Jayasuriya’s personality: He loved people and ideas, and he did so without any thoughts of private aggrandizement or personal vanity. He was a great raconteur with a fine sense of humour. A ‘man of conviction,’ he was never aggressive or incoherent, even in heated arguments; reasoned calmness was a hallmark of his character as a public intellectual. He had a vast coterie of friends across continents who appreciated this gentle soul. As much as we mourn his passing, we will also celebrate the opportunities we had to know and associate with him.
Sisira is survived by his wife, Sreeni, and their daughter, Tanya.