Education
Born and raised in Colombo, Sri Lanka, she studied economics at Cambridge University and a has a doctorate from the University of Oxford.
Born and raised in Colombo, Sri Lanka, she studied economics at Cambridge University and a has a doctorate from the University of Oxford.
She is on the faculty of the Department of Economics at SOAS, University of London and is a research scholar at Columbia University, New York City. She lives in New York, and London. The tsunami carried her two miles inland and she was able to survive by clinging to a tree branch.
Deraniyagala later relocated to New York where she became a visiting research scholar at Columbia University.
Her 2013 memoir, Wave, recounts her experiences in the tsunami and the progression of her grief in the ensuing years.