Sri Lankan Mass Communication Pioneer Professor Wimal Dissanayake Dies at 86

Professor Wimal Dissanayake, a leading Sri Lankan scholar of literature, arts and mass communication, died in Hawaii. Born in 1939 in Kurunegala, he was educated at Trinity College Kandy and the University of Peradeniya, where he earned an honours degree in Sinhala and later held professorships in both Sinhala and English.

He introduced mass communication as an academic discipline in Sri Lanka and served as the country’s first professor of mass communication at the University of Kelaniya. He also taught at the Universities of Colombo and Vidyalankara and was a professor of aesthetic arts at the University of Hawaii. Dissanayake authored several poetry collections and critical works and is recognised for pioneering Asian communication theory. Arrangements for his final rites were to be announced later.