Ganeshan Wignaraja is a researcher and practitioner who undertakes studies, provides policy advice, and runs training programmes for development agencies, governments and businesses. His expertise covers international trade and regional integration, macroeconomic analysis, foreign aid and infrastructure, agrifood policy, and the Sustainable Development Goals. He has written extensively on these topics and led teams to deliver complex projects for aid agencies and governments in over 30 countries in Asia, Africa, Europe and Latin America.

Concurrent with his affiliation at ODI, he is the Advisor to the President of Sri Lanka on Strategic Trade Policy. He is also the Professorial Fellow in Economics and Trade at Gateway House: The Indian Council on Global Relations in Mumbai and a Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the Institute of South Asian Studies of the National University of Singapore.

In a career spanning over the last thirty years, Ganeshan has held senior roles in international organizations (including the Director of Research at the Asian Development Bank (ADB) Institute in Tokyo, Advisor to the Chief Economist of the ADB in Manila, Chief Programme Officer at the Commonwealth Secretariat in London, and a Visiting Scholar at the IMF in Washington DC), government (including Executive Director of Sri Lanka’s Foreign Ministry think tank and a Member of the Monetary Policy Consultative Committee of the Central Bank of Sri Lanka) and the private sector (including Global Head of Trade and Competitiveness at Maxwell Stamp PLC in London). He has also worked for the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and Oxford University.

Ganeshan has a DPhil in Economics from Oxford University and a BSc in Economics from the London School of Economics.