Joseph Chandrakanthan

Who is Joseph Chandrakanthan?

Respected as one of the outstanding Tamil intellectuals, Professor Joseph Chandrakanthan is an eminent scholar in Biomedical Ethics and Asian Theology. He has addressed several national and International conferences on Palliative Care, End of Life Care, Religious Cultural Issues in Ethcis, and Mental Health Ethics. He received his Bachelors Degree in Theology (1976) and Masters degree in Theology (1979 with First class honours from Gnana Deepa University in Pune India and was also awarded the degree of Master of Philosophy by the same University. He holds a PhD from the University of Ottawa and a Doctor of Theology from Saint Paul University in Ottawa. From 1980 to 1996, he was Senior Lecturer and later Associate Professor of Christian Studies and Head of the Department of Christian and Islamic Studies at the State University of Jaffna in Sri Lanka. From 1996-1999 He was appointed Professor of Theology and Ethics at Concordia University in Montreal, Canada. From 1999 he serves as Consultant in Bioethics at the Centre for Clinical Ethics and the University of Toronto Joint Centre for Bioethics and serves as Associate Professor in the Centre for the Study of Religion at the University of Toronto. He also teaches at the Toronto Graduate School of Theology of the University of Toronto. He has presented papers at a number of national and international conferences and published ten books and over 50 articles in issues related Christian Theology, Ethics, Human Rights and inter-religious spirituality. His book entitled The Origin and Development of Sri Lankan Tamil Nationalism co-authored with Professor A. J. Wilson was published in 2001 by the University of Washington. He has given public lectures at several European and American Universities including Oxford University, Uppsala University in Sweden and the University of London. I was one of his students at Concordia University in Montreal where he taught from 1996-1999 and I admire him for his depth and breadth of knowledge. Presently I am working on a biography of Dr. Chandrakanthan. Written by James De Luca