Dr Asanga Welikala, Senior Lecturer in Public Law at the University of Edinburgh, joins Dr Tom Simpson, Associate Professor in Philosophy and Public Policy at the Blavatnik School of Government, for a conversation as part of the International Perspectives on Conservatism series.

International Perspectives on Conservatism is a series that aims to deepen our understanding of what the political right does and should stand for, and how it can contribute to stable, free, prosperous and secure democratic societies globally. Speakers will be leading academics and policymakers from around the world. Find out more about the project International Perspectives on Conservatism.

Dr Asanga Welikala

Dr Asanga Welikala is a Senior Lecturer in Public Law and an Associate Director of the Edinburgh Centre for Constitutional Law at the School of Law, and the Co-Convenor of the Keith Forum on Commonwealth Constitutionalism, at the University of Edinburgh. He is also a Senior Research Fellow of the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, University of London, and the Centre for Policy Alternatives, Sri Lanka. He is a Senior Technical Advisor to the Constitution Building Programme of International IDEA. His teaching and research interests lie in comparative constitutional law, Commonwealth constitutional history, and applied constitutional theory.

In United Nations and other capacities, he has been involved in constitution-making and governance reform advisory work in a wide range of countries, including Sri Lanka, Iraq, The Gambia, Myanmar, Somalia, The Maldives, Egypt, Libya, Nepal, Thailand, Indonesia, Nagorny-Karabakh, and Armenia. He currently leads the 'Reconstitute Sri Lanka' research programme, which supports efforts at constitutional reformation to restore Sri Lanka's Commonwealth parliamentary heritage and reorient constitutional order to the common good. He is a co-editor of The New Digest, a forum for short essays on law, politics political theology, postliberalism, and the common good.