VEN. DR. MAHINDA DEEGALLE United Kingdom Moderator (Session 2) Ven. Dr Mahinda Deegalle is Senior Lecturer in the School of Humanities and Cultural Industries at Bath Spa University, United Kingdom. Ven. Deegalle graduated from University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka with first class honours and received Fulbright / President's scholarship to carry out Master in Theological Studies (Comparative Religion) degree at Harvard University. He obtained a doctorate in History of Religions from The University of Chicago. He has spent three and a half years in Japan as Bukkyo Dendo Kyokai postdoctoral fellow at Kyoto University and Japan Society for the Promotion of Science Research Fellow at Aichi Gakuin University. He held the first Numata Professorship in Buddhist Studies at McGill University, Canada before teaching Sinhala language at Cornell University. Now he permanently resides in England. Dr. Deegalle serves as a member of the Steering Committee of the Buddhism Section of the American Academy of Religion and of the managing committee of Spalding Symposium on Indian Religions. He is the editor of the journal of Buddhist-Christian Studies. He is the author of Popularizing Buddhism: Preaching as Performance in Sri Lanka (State University of New York Press, 2006), the editor of Dharma to the UK: A Centennial Celebration of Buddhist Legacy (World Buddhist Foundation, 2008), Buddhism, Conflict and Violence in Modern Sri Lanka (Routledge, 2006), and the co-editor of Pali Buddhism (Curzon, 1996). He is the project manager for the PMI2 British Council funded Bath Spa Study Abroad Programme in Korea and has travelled to Korea three times with student teams. His current research concentrates on the ethics of war and monastic politics in relation to armed conflict, violence and rehabilitation in modern Sri Lanka. One of his most recent publication is "Norms of War in Theravada Buddhism," World Religions and Norms of War, ed. Vesselin Popovski, Gregorg M. Reichberg and Nicholas Turner (Tokyo, New York and Paris: United Nations University Press, 2009), pp. 60-86. Ven. Deegalle is a board member of International Council for Buddhist Development in Sri Lanka (Ministry of Buddhist and Religious Affairs). He has recently founded a Buddhist Research Centre, Kandy, Sri Lanka.