Conference Chair & Committee - ICOSS 2025

CONFERENCE CHAIR AND COMMITTEE

Conference Co-Chair

Prof. Steven Ratuva

Director
Macmillan Brown Centre for Pacific Studies
University of Canterbury
New Zealand

Professor Steven Ratuva, an award-winning political sociologist and global interdisciplinary scholar, is Director of the Macmillan Brown Centre for Pacific Studies. He was awarded the 2020 Metge Medal by the Royal Society of New Zealand -Te Apārangi, the country’s highest award in social science research excellence. He was also co-winner of the 2019 University of Canterbury research medal, the university’s highest academic honour. He became the first Pacific Islander and foreign national to win both esteemed and highly contested awards. He is also recipient of a number of research grants by Marsden, NZ Health Research Council, Ministry of Foreign Affairs and others, totaling a few million dollars.

He was a recipient of a Fulbright Senior Fellowship and was Fulbright professor at the University of California (LA), Duke University and Georgetown University in 2018. He is Chair of the International Political Science Association research committee on Security, Conflict and Democratization and former President of the Pacific Islands Political Studies Association. He has transdisciplinary across sociology, anthropology, political science, development studies, economics, philosophy and history. With a PhD from the Institute of Development Studies (University of Sussex), he has published widely on a range of issues Pacific societies and culture, indigenous knowledge, development, conflict, peace, political change, coups, memory activism, social solidarity economy, social protection, elections, ethnicity, security, military, affirmative action, COVID-19, social indexes, indigenous knowledge, climate security and nationalism.

Conference Co-Chair

Dr. Loren O’Connor

President of WDRPA,
Former University Assistant Vice Chancellor
Office of Accessible Education
Kolpin & O’Connor Global Consultants, LLC.

Steering Committee Member

Assoc Prof. Dr. Robert L. Hawkins

Vice Dean and Associate Professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Social Work, USA

Dr. Robert L. Hawkins is Vice Dean and Associate Professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Social Work, USA. His research focuses on complex poverty, social capital use and development, cultural identity, community participatory research, and social policy analysis. He was previously the Academic Dean for Academic and Faculty Affairs at the Silver School of Social Work at New York University, where he was on faculty for 18 years. For 14 of those years, he held an endowed chair in Poverty Studies, which he first received prior to earning tenure at NYU. He has conducted ethnographic studies in New Orleans and other parts of the deep South and New York City. He also developed an innovative CBPR study in rural municipalities in the Philippines. Further, he is part of a multidisciplinary research team utilizing the multiphase optimization strategy (MOST), a framework for developing efficient and cost-effective interventions in low-income individuals. Dr. Hawkins is also a co-investigator on a $2.3 million NIH grant to use the MOST framework with vaccine hesitant African American and Latinx front-line workers. His current research looks at historical racial trauma and the impact of the pandemic on low-income workers in the American South. Prior to coming to UNC-Chapel Hill, Dr. Hawkins also served as a Professor of Social Work and the Associate Dean for Academic and Faculty Affairs in the College of Humanities and Social Sciences at North Carolina State University.

Over several years, Dr. Hawkins has received a great deal of acknowledgement for his scholarship and teaching. AT NYU, he was a recipient of the University’s Distinguished Teaching Award, NYU MLK Teaching Award, the Silver School of Social Work Distinguished Teaching Award, the Dorothy Height Award for Distinguished Faculty, and the NIH New Investigator Award. He was selected by the Robert Sterling Clark Foundation to join the Sterling Network NYC, a multidisciplinary network of New York City leaders working together to tackle the challenge of increasing economic mobility. Dr. Hawkins was also selected to be a member of the Expert Working Group of the German Marshal Fund in the United States. Currently, he serves as the Editor-in-Chief of the journal Social Work Research. Dr. Hawkins holds degrees from Appalachian State University, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and Brandeis University.

Steering Committee Member

Prof. Dr. G.T. Madhubhashini Hewage

Professor in Communication at the Department of Social Studies, Open University of Sri Lanka

Dr. G.T. Madhubhashini Hewage is a Professor in Communication at the Department of Social Studies, Open University of Sri Lanka, a position held since September 2022. With a strong academic background, Prof. Hewage holds a PhD in Communication from the National University of Malaysia (2014) and an MPhil in Mass Communication from the University of Kelaniya (2010). Dr. G.T.Madhubhashini Hewage earned a Bachelor of Arts (Special) in Mass Media with First Class honors from Sri Palee Campus, University of Colombo (2007). Throughout their career, She has held various academic positions at the Open University of Sri Lanka, starting as a Temporary Tutor in 2007, advancing to Lecturer (2009), and later Senior Lecturer (Grade II and I). With extensive experience in higher education, Dr. G.T.Madhubhashini Hewage also completed the Certificate of Teaching in Higher Education (CTHE) in 2016.

Steering Committee Member

Prof. Deepak Kumar

Renowned science historian and academic – India

Prof. Deepak Kumar (born 1952) is a renowned science historian and academic. He has researched and published on the histories of science, technology, environment and medicine (HISTEM) in the context of modern India for more than four decades. He served as a Lecturer in the Department of History, Kurukshetra University, 1976-1983, Scientist, History and Philosophy of Science Division, NISTADS, 1983-1997, and Associate Professor & Professor, Zakir Hussain Centre for Educational Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, 1988-2016. In 1997, he founded an International Commission on Science an Empire and was its President till 2001.

His publications include Science and Empire: Essays in Indian Context (1992), Science and the Raj (1995), Technology and the Raj: Western and Technical Transfers to India (ed.1995), Disease and Medicine in India: A Historical Overview (2001), and The Trishanku Nation: Memory, Self and Society in Contemporary India (2015). He has also contributed several articles on history of science in India in leading journals of social sciences.

Steering Committee Member

Prof. Dr. Emma Porio

Professor, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, School of Social Sciences Ateneo de Manila University , Philippines

Prof. Dr. Emma Porio is Professor, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, School of Social Sciences Ateneo de Manila University and Science Research Fellow, Manila Observatory. She is President of the International Sociological Association (ISA), Clinical/Sociology Division (2019-2023) and of the Asia Pacific Sociological Association (2020-2023). She is editor of the Journal of Sustainable Cities Frontier and the Principal Editorial Adviser of the Environment and Urbanization (Asia Edition) and Review Editor of the Journal of the Cities of the Global South. Currently, she is Project Leader and Principal Investigator of the transdisciplinary action research project, Coastal Cities at Risk: Investing in Climate and Disaster Resilience in the Philippines (CCARPH). She co-directs the Master of Disaster Risk and Resilience (MDRR) at the Ateneo de Manila University. Finally, she is a member of the Climate Change Commission’s (Phil) National Panel of Technical Experts.

Steering Committee Member

Dr. Mercy Karuniah Jesuvadian

Senior Lecturer, National Institute of Education – Psychology and Child & Human Development ,Nanyang Technological University Singapore

Dr. Mercy Karuniah Jesuvadian currently teaches pre-service and in-service courses in educational psychology. She also designs and teaches Masters courses in the Early Childhood Masters programme. She is the course designer and course coordinator for the in service course: Engaging Parents: A Practical Approach. She also works with in-service pre-school teachers on parent-school partnerships. Her formal training and experience as a classroom teacher had inspired her interest in learning more about the social and emotional development of young children. Her Master’s dissertation (2007)explored children’s criteria in selecting peers in a local preschool. Her PhD dissertation (2016) explored parent-child relationships in impoverished single mother homes in Singapore. Her other research interests include matters of social justice, diversity and multiculturalism as practiced in the local context. She continues to research within the qualitative paradigm

Conference Convener

Mr. Isanka P. Gamage

The International Institute of Knowledge Management (TIIKM),
Sri Lanka
Hotline : +94 715 589 870 | +94 777 379 779
Phone : +94 112044485
Email : isanka.gamage@tiikmedu.com

Mr. Isanka P. Gamage, is the Co-founder and Managing Director of The International Institute of Knowledge Management Based in Sri Lanka. He is the founding manager of three international journals and has served as the Conference Convener for over 350 international Conferences organized in 8 Countries namely Sri Lanka, China, Indonesia, India, Vietnam, Philippines, Malaysia, Thailand, and virtually. He has initiated and engaged with many different online and offline knowledge-sharing platforms to make a sustainable future.
In his journey thus far, he has had the privilege to closely work with many world-renowned personalities and also with over 450 International universities and has been in the lights of more than 2000 leading Professors across the globe on several fields of study. He has also had the honor of working with the Ministries, Diplomats, industry professionals, and international organizations in different countries.
He is reading for Doctor of Business Administration (DBA) in University of Kelaniya Sri Lanka. He has completed the Commonwealth Executive Master of Business Administration (CEMBA) and BSc Marketing. He also has a Bachelor of Therapeutic Counseling from The Open International University for Complementary Medicines.

Conference Secretary

Ms. Kalpana Madavie

Tel : +94 11 799 2022

Hotline : +94 77 274 1265

Email : secretariat@socialsciences.tiikm.com

Scientific Committee

The Scientific Committee consists of the experts in the field from many different countries in the world. The Committee Members evaluate your abstracts and provide insights to improve those further. According to the final decision given by them, you would be able to process further tasks for participating the conference.