ICOAH 2025: Meet the Steering Committee

Meet our PrestigiousDriving Vision and Strategy for a Successful Conference

Our Dedicated Steering Committee

Conference Chair

Conference Convener

Isanka P.Gamage is the Co-founder and Managing Director of The International Institute of Knowledge Management (TIIKM) Based in Sri Lanka. He is the founding manager of three international journals and has served as the Conference Convener for over 350 international Conferences organized in 8 Countries namely Sri Lanka, China, Indonesia, India, Vietnam, Philippines, Malaysia, Thailand, and virtually. He has initiated and engaged with many different online and offline knowledge-sharing platforms to make a sustainable future. In his journey thus far, he has had the privilege to closely work with many world-renowned personalities as the Nobel Laureates, Subject Gurus, and also with over 450 International universities and has been in the lights of more than 2000 leading Professors across the globe on several fields of study. He has also had the honor of working with the Ministries, Diplomats, industry professionals, and international organizations in different countries.

As a founding member and CEO of a few consortiums and associations in Education, Public Health, Environment, Women and Gender, Social Sciences, Fisheries and Aquaculture, and Disability and Rehabilitation, he is serving to Asian and African regions to achieve their Sustainable Development Goals by connecting his network in Western countries and trying to implement the concept of knowledge diplomacy.

He is a life coach and mentoring practitioner with Neuro-Linguistics Programming (NLP). And also, he is conducting mindfulness training programs locally and internationally.

He is reading for Doctor of Business Administration (DBA) in University of Kelaniya in Sri Lanka. He has completed the Commonwealth Executive Master of Business Administration (CEMBA) and BSc Marketing. He also has a Bachelor of Therapeutic Counseling from The Open International University for Complementary Medicines.

Steering Commitee members

Associate Professor Dr. Preeti T. Joshi currently serves as the Principal of the School of Liberal Arts and the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at Sri Balaji University, Pune. She holds an impressive array of academic qualifications, including an M.A. in English, an M.A. in Indology (in which she secured second rank at her university), and is presently pursuing an M.A. in Sanskrit. Additionally, she holds a B.Ed., an M.Phil. in English, a Ph.D. in English, and a Certification in Digital Humanities from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Jodhpur.

Dr. Joshi’s academic specialization encompasses English Language and Communication, Indology, and Digital Humanities. In recognition of her research excellence, she was awarded the prestigious FUR Fellowship for Dalai Lama Studies in 2022. She is a Lifetime Member of the Centre for Contemporary Indian Studies (CCIS) at the University of Colombo, Sri Lanka, and has received academic recognition from international institutions including the University of Northern Colorado (USA), the University of Colombo (Sri Lanka), and the University of London Union (UK).

With more than 17 years of academic and administrative experience, Dr. Joshi has held several prominent leadership roles such as Associate Dean (External Relations), Head of the Internal Quality Assurance Cell (IQAC), and Head of Research. Her interdisciplinary contributions span Media Studies, Education, and Peace Studies.

A prolific academic and author, Dr. Joshi has published a reference book, two book chapters, over 15 peer-reviewed research papers, and more than 20 articles in prominent national dailies including The Times of India, The Hindu, Maharashtra Times, and Sakal. She is an accredited research supervisor and has chaired numerous national and international conferences.

In addition to her academic accomplishments, she holds two patents—one national and one international—as well as a registered copyright in her name.

Dr. Loulou Malaeb attended the American University of Beirut as a student in Political Science. Enrolling in two courses of Philosophy changed the trajectory of her life and scholarly interests. Keeping her Political Studies as a minor degree, Prof. Malaeb graduated from the American University of Beirut with a Major in Philosophy. Being fluent in French, she made use of this advantage to pursue her graduate studies at Saint-Joseph University in Beirut where she had time to ponder Political Philosophy, specifically the concept of property, and develop a hypothesis considered by her superiors as rigorously thoughtful and exclusively new – namely, the property instinct.

In her Masters research, Prof. Malaeb focused on the social contract philosophy and especially the work of John Locke, Thomas Hobbes and Jean-Jacques Rousseau in relation to her own hypothesis of the property instinct. As for her PhD dissertation, she is still delving into the same subject, on a broader scale, where her area of research is now the German philosophers G.F.W. Hegel and Karl Marx on the theme of alienation in relation to their own property instinct.

Although having several years teaching experience, Dr. Malaeb considers herself a passionate student who is always in the process of learning new things when it comes to teaching. She considers teaching in general and teaching philosophy in particular as the passions of her life and owes this to the influence of great professors, like Dr. Jad Hatem, Dr. Paul Salem, and Dr. Aziz al Azmeh among others.

António Costa Valente holds a PhD in Communication Sciences and Technologies from the University of Aveiro. He was a visiting professor at the public universities of Aveiro and Vila Real and director of the Theater and Cinema Department at ESAP – Escola Superior Artística do Porto.

He directs the AVANCA Film Festival since 1997, the scientific conference AVANCA|CINEMA since 2010 and coordinates the “Prémio Eng.º. Fernando Gonçalves Lavrador ”, awarded annually to the best academic research on cinema.

He is coordinator of Europe in the “International Federation of Film Societies” and national coordinator of “INPUT-TV”, an international conference that annually brings together public televisions from around the world.

He is co-editor of the “International Journal of Cinema”.

He has produced and directed films that have been distinguished with more than three hundred awards at festivals on all continents. Among them, he produced and co-directed the first feature film of Portuguese animation cinema. He is the author of several books, book chapters and other scientific publications. It has several doctoral and master’s thesis orientations completed. He is a reviewer of several national and international scientific conferences and journals.

Dr. Stephen Dobson is an Associate Professor of Creativity and Enterprise at the School of Performance and Cultural Industries, University of Leeds. His PhD in Urban Planning is from the Department of Landscape, School of Architecture at the University of Sheffield and he is interested in the linkages between urban space and the performativity of the city through cultural practices and that of urban policy/planning practices, to support entrepreneurship and creative ecosystems.

His research spans several areas relating to cultural and creative industries and entrepreneurship including; entrepreneurial identity and creative enterprise, the creative workplace and leadership for fostering innovation and creativity, critical management, cross-disciplinary creativity, cultural and creative industries policy, and digital enterprise. He regularly deliver entrepreneurship policy and creative leadership executive programmes for global partners including the West Kowloon Cultural District AUthority (WKCDA) and the Ghanaian Government (National Entrepreneurship and Innovation Programme).

He worked extensively with international partners including British Council funded programmes with Hanoi University of Science and Technology (HUST) via the SEASON 2023 grant programme and previously through the British Council Higher Education Partnerships Programme (HEPP).