Sumanthri Samarwickrama

Sumanthri is a lecturer at the Department of Integrated Design, Faculty of Architecture, University of Moratuwa. She is a board member of ATypI and the Sri Lankan country delegate. The focus of her research work had been in learning the practices of Type Design and its evolution in Sri Lanka. She addresses the current typographic knowledge through a historical outline in relation to the introduction of the printing press and various technological developments. The research reveals that the existing typefaces were developed intuitively by designers or copied, adapted to overcome technological changes and highlights the absence of formal knowledge on Sinhala typography. This now had led her to expand her research towards understanding early design practices of South Asian that contributes to design education today.
She has published and presented many research papers at conferences in Canada, Portugal, Ireland, Japan, Australia, India etc. contributes as a reviewer, jury member and panelist. She is currently the Director Research at the Faculty of Architecture Research Unit (FARU), University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka