Venya de Silva

Venya De Silva

Research Associate

B.A. (Yale, U.S), M.Phil. (Oxford), D.Phil. (Oxford)

Dr. Venya De Silva is a social anthropologist.  Her expertise is in conducting qualitative research, including ethnography. She completed her undergraduate studies at Yale University, USA, and her doctoral studies at Oxford University, UK.

Dr. De Silva’s doctoral research examines how youth living in post-conflict settings experience and endure or contest the social, political, economic, and historical conditions which shape their lives. She has worked as a researcher at the Oxford Learning Institute (Oxford), and the International Centre for Ethnic Studies (Colombo).

Dr. De Silva has served as a consultant on short-term strategic consulting projects, including a project for the World Economic Forum based at the University of Oxford’s Said Business School.  At Verité Research, she has worked on assignments covering youth unemployment, female labour force participation and transitional justice. Dr. De Silva co-authored the gender assessment chapter in the 2018 YouLead Market assessment. She was also the lead researcher in an assignment that studied the livelihood of post-war men and women living the northern and eastern provinces. She designed time-use surveys to better understand the gender roles in rural post-war livelihoods.