Dr. Prathibha Mahanamahewa is the current Rector of the Sri Palee Campus of the University of Colombo (Sri Lanka) and has been a Senior Fellow in the sub-project “Digital Access to Library Content – Legal Frameworks in Germany and Sri Lanka” at the Centre for Advanced Study since 2024.

Mahanamahewa studied law in Colombo (LL.B. 1993), Melbourne (LL.M. 2000) and Brisbane, where he obtained his doctorate in law in 2006. He was admitted to the Bar in 1993 and was a Commissioner of the Human Rights Commission of Sri Lanka in 2015. Before taking up his current position as the seventh Rector of the Sri Palee Campus of the University of Colombo in 2021, he was a Senior Lecturer at the Faculty of Law of the University of Colombo and held teaching and administrative positions at various universities in Sri Lanka and abroad.

His research interests include IT and data protection law as well as human rights.

A list of his publications is available at https://www.res.cmb.ac.lk/commercial.law/mahanamahewa/.