Jeeva Niriella started her career as an academic at the Faculty of Law, University of Colombo in 1993. Since then she held several administrative positions at University level including the Head of the Department, Deputy Director/Examination-Virtual Campus, University of Colombo, member of the Board of Management of Post Graduate Institute of English, Open University Sri Lanka and Nominee for the Selection Committee of the University Grants Commission, Sri Lanka.In the last 15 years as an Academic in the fields of Law and criminal justice she published books with reputed publishers such as Lexis Nexis India, book chapters, research articles published with internationally reputed publishers such as Springer, Rutledge -Taylor and Francis, Emerald, David Co., Med-Crave and a few with local publishers. She has presented almost 50 research papers at international and national conferences hosted by the International/local Research Organizations, Universities and other Academic Institutions. In the last 10 years she participated as a Keynote Speaker at several International Conferences, chaired sessions in many international Conferences, in addition to invited speaker, chair at national level conferences.
Professor Jeeva Niriella is a well respected academic in the fields of law, human rights, criminal justice, criminology and victimology which allowed her to undertake positions in international associations and societies. She is a member of the Executive Committee and the Constitutional Council of World Centre for Women’s Studies (World CWS); the Presidium of General Assembly of Asian Criminological Society (as the first Sri Lankan who have been appointed to the board) for the period from 2019 to 2021; (the first Sri Lanka) Vice President, South Asian Society of Criminology and Victimology (Headquarters India) since April 2019; and (first female from South Asia and first Sri Lankan) member of the Board of Directors of International Society of Criminology (ISC) from 2019-2024.
Professor Jeeva Niriella’s academic service further includes her pioneering several important academic initiatives as well. She introduced Criminal Justice as a subject at the post graduate level in the University of Colombo in 2008 and the Open University in 2009 for the first time in the academic history of the university system in Sri Lanka. She also introduced the Certificate Course in Fundamentals of Criminal Law for non –lawyers in 2019 (the first programme) and Diploma Course in Public Law for the non Lawyers in 2020 again for the first time in the, Faculty of Law, Colombo University.