Dr. Piyasiri Wickramasekara

Dr Piyasiri Wickramasekara is an international expert with over 40 years of research and work experience covering development, employment, and international migration issues. At the World Trade Institute, Dr Piyasiri will join the team of Prof. Elisa Fornalé.

Dr Piyasiri served as a senior specialist on international migration and employment with the International Labour Organization (ILO) for 25 years. He is currently a Vice President of the Global Migration Policy Associates (GMPA), an international network of migration experts.

Wickramasekara’s expertise in international migration covers: Asian labour migration, governance of migration, migration and development, bilateral labour agreements, temporary and circular migration schemes, irregular migration, rights of migrant workers, and migration statistics. He has contributed extensively to ILO’s thinking on labour migration issues, especially its rights-based approach. and was one of the architects of the ILO flagship product, the “Multilateral Framework on Labour Migration”. He is also a member of the ILO Working Group on Labour Migration Statistics for defining international standards on labour migration statistics. In recent years, he has carried out extensive research and provided advisory services to the ILO and governments in Asia and Africa on bilateral labour migration instruments.

Wickramasekara obtained his Bachelor’s degree in economics from the University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka, and his PhD in economics from the University of Cambridge, United Kingdom.