Dharshani Lakmali Jayasinghe

Dr. Jayasinghe is Assistant Professor of Anglophone and World Literatures at the Department of English at Central Connecticut State University (CCSU). She is also affiliated with and teaches in the CCSU Honors Program, the Asian American and Pacific Islander Studies (AAPI) Program, and the Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies (WGSS) Program. Dr. Jayasinghe received her Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from Stanford University, and she was a Visiting Ph.D. Scholar at the Institute for Comparative Literature and Society (ICLS) at Columbia University. More recently, she was a Postdoctoral Associate of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Sawyer Seminar on “Unbordering Migration in the Americas: Causes, Experiences, Identities” at the Humanities Center at University of Rochester. During her time as a Fulbright Fellow at University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Dr. Jayasinghe also completed a Graduate Certificate in Film Studies. 

Dr. Jayasinghe’s research interests include topics in world literature and film, law and literature, immigration, translation studies, and Asian popular culture. Her publications have appeared in several journals such as Law and Literature, South Asian Review, Modern Fiction Studies, Dibur, Routed, Curated: Thinking with Literature, Windward Review, Occasion, and Law, Culture and the Humanities, among others. Dr. Jayasinghe is also a co-editor of the two-volume anthology Contemporary Asian Popular Culture Vol. 1: Squid Game, Utopias, and Dystopias and Contemporary Asian Popular Culture Vol. 2: Cultural Dynamics and Global Impact. Prior to joining CCSU, Dr. Jayasinghe taught at Stanford University as a full-time Lecturer in the Civic, Liberal, and Global Education (COLLEGE) program, the Stanford Continuing Studies program, the Stanford Pre-Collegiate Studies program, the Stanford Language Center (French), and at the City College of New York. She has been teaching and mentoring both college and high school students since 2004, starting her teaching career at European College as a Lecturer of English as a Second Language (ESL), and at the Alliance Française, where she taught French as a Foreign Language (FSL). 

Dr. Jayasinghe has won over 30 fellowships, awards, and, grants for her research and teaching during the last few years, notably the Stanford Historical Society’s “Susan W. Schofield Oral History Award for Excellence in the Practice of Oral History” for her oral history project “In Transit: An Oral History Project on Crossing Borders.” During four consecutive years, Dr. Jayasinghe won the 1st place (twice), the 2nd place, and the 3rd place awards at the Annual Korean Literature Essay Competition (double-blind and peer-reviewed) organized by the Korea Translation Institute and the University of California, Berkeley. She was also the recipient of the Annual Graduate Film Studies Academic Paper Prize (1st place award) presented by the Interdepartmental Program in Film Studies at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Additionally, she is the recipient of the Fulbright Fellowship, the Endeavor Award, the Andrew W. Mellon Dissertation Writing Fellowship awarded by the Stanford Humanities Center, and several fellowships and grants awarded by the Stanford Center for East Asian Studies, the Stanford School of Humanities and Sciences, the Stanford Europe Center, the Stanford Center for Spatial and Textual Analysis (CESTA), and Central Connecticut State University.