Professor Rohan Kariyawasam
Position: Professor
School: Law
Tel: +44 (0)29 208 74807
Fax: +44 (0)29 208 74097
Email: KariyawasamR@cf.ac.uk
Ext: 74807
Point of contact:
Sarah Kennedy
Introduction
Rohan Kariyawasam is a professor of commercial law at Cardiff University. Prior to Cardiff, he was at the University of Essex and a member of the Human Rights Centre and Director of their Program in Information Technology, Media and E-Commerce Law. He has worked as a consultant for both the Media & Communications Department at Clifford Chance, the media law department at Field Fisher Waterhouse, and as an external consultant to the UK’s Department for International Development (DFID), Cable & Wireless, and the UK’s Office of Telecommunications (now OFCOM). He qualified as a solicitor with DentonWildeSapte. Prior to the law, Rohan trained as a telecommunications/computer science engineer with Marconi Underwater Systems, and worked in brand management with Unilever, and McGraw-Hill’s strategic technology market research consultancy, Northern Business Information in London, Hong Kong and Malaysia. He has over twenty-five years experience in the communications sector.
Rohan studied at Harvard Law School as a Berkman Fellow, the University of Kent at Canterbury, the University of Geneva, Switzerland, the College of Law in London, and the Centre for Commercial Law Studies at Queen Mary University of London. He is a past recipient of a Fulbright Scholarship to Harvard.
Rohan is the founding trustee to the Rahula Trust http://www.rahula-trust.org, which provides sponsorship to academically gifted children living in poverty in the developing world, and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.
His research involves the intersection of trade, technology, IP, and development. He has just completed research looking at the role of fair trade, ethical labels and the WTO (in conjunction with Queen Mary) for the UK’s Arts & Humanities Research Council. He has been engaged in research in India and China for several years and has been a visiting professor at Peking University Law School. His latest book is Chinese Intellectual Property & Technology Laws (Edward Elgar, 2011).
