Naazima Kamardeen holds a Doctor of Philosophy degree from the University of Colombo, Sri Lanka, a Master of Laws degree in International Legal Studies from Georgetown University USA, and a Bachelor of Laws degree from the University of Colombo, Sri Lanka. She is also an Attorney-at-Law of the Supreme Court of Sri Lanka. She currently holds the Chair in Commercial Law at the Faculty of Law, University of Colombo.
Her research interests include intellectual and cultural property, international law, biopiracy and traditional knowledge, trade and investment, environment, and research ethics. She is a member of the Law Commission of Sri Lanka, of the Research Ethics Committee of the Sri Lanka Medical Association and the Ethics Committee of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Sri Lanka.
She is keenly interested in the area of cultural property law, with a focus on colonial cultural property. Her work centres around identifying the legal concepts related to ownership, possession and restitution of these objects. Her work takes a global majority perspective and considers these topics mainly from the viewpoint of former colonies.
She has authored two books, “Global Trade and Sri Lanka: Which Way Forward?” published in 2016, and “Biopiracy’s Forgotten Victims: Lessons from Sri Lanka” published in 2019.
