Pahalawattage Don Premasiri is a senior professor of
Pali and Buddhist Studies of the University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka. He is the founding president of the Society
for the Integration of Science and Human Values of the Department of Pali and
Buddhist Studies, which is the only society in Sri Lanka in the Local Societies
Initiative program. Prof. Premasiri
obtained his bachelor’s degree from the University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka in
1963, and joined the academic staff of the same university immediately after
graduation. He obtained a second
bachelor’s degree in Philosophy from the University of Cambridge, UK in 1967
and a Ph.D. in Comparative Philosophy from the University of Hawaii USA in
1980.
Prof. Premasiri has numerous papers published in the area of
Buddhist Ethics, Buddhist Philosophy, Buddhist Psychology and Buddhism in
relation to current socio-political issues.
He has contributed over ten articles to the Encyclopedia of Buddhism published in Sri Lanka and numerous
scholarly articles to national and international journals. The Department of Pali and Buddhist Studies
published a collection of his papers in 2006 under the title Studies in Buddhist
Philosophy and Religion. Prof. Premasiri has taught Buddhism and philosophy
in a number of universities and educational institutes outside Sri Lanka. His specialty is in Buddhist ethics and early
Buddhist philosophy as represented in the Pali Buddhist literary tradition.