Dr. Gamini Wijesuriya is a renowned heritage practitioner with over 40 years of experience on World Heritage, living heritage and people-centred approaches to conservation. He has held positions as former Director of Conservation of the government of Sri Lanka, Principal Regional Scientist of the Department of Conservation, New Zealand, and a staff member of (ICCROM), Rome, Italy. His qualifications include PhD (Leiden), MA (York), MA (Carnegie- Mellon), MSc and BSc (Sri Lanka). He has published widely.

Currently, he is a Special Advisor to the Director General of ICCROM, a Special Advisory to the Director of WHITRAP, Shanghai, Honorary Senior Lecturer, Institute of Archaeology, UCL, London and a Facilitator, for Capacity Building Programme of the ICH.