Background on Wijeyesinghe, Charmaine
Charmaine Wijeyesinghe is a consultant, speaker, and author exploring social identity, Multiracial identity, and intersectionality through diverse perspectives. The foundations for Wijeyesinghe's work and writing were formed through the classes, positions, and relationships she experienced at the University of Massachusetts Amherst (UMass).
Wijeyesinghe was born in Danvers, Massachusetts in 1958, shortly after her parents and two older siblings immigrated to the United States from Sri Lanka (then Ceylon). She enrolled as an undergraduate at UMass in 1976, first in pre-med, then changing to psychology. She received a BS degree in 1980. Wijeyesinghe held several administrative positions at the University while completing her master's and doctoral degrees from the School of Education. From 1981-1992, she worked in residential life and in the offices of the Dean of Students, Ombudsperson, and Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs. Around 1985, she joined a consulting collective formed by graduates of the School of Education's social justice program, called DiversityWorks, that enabled her to engage in social justice work with organizations around the country for several years. Wijeyesinghe received a master's degree in higher education administration in 1985, and a doctorate in organizational development and applied group studies in 1992, both from the School of Education. As a graduate student she co-taught classes on forms of oppression and group dynamics. After receiving her doctorate, Wijeyesinghe became the Dean of Students of Mount Holyoke College, and then a member of the national program staff of the National Conference of Christians and Jews (based in New York City). During this period, Wijeyesinghe also taught seminars at Omega Institute in NY and the School for International Training in VT.
Engaging with the faculty and graduate students in the School of Education exposed Wijeyesinghe to foundational information on social oppression, racial identity theory, and organizational change. Her 1992 dissertation, Towards a Theory of Bi-Racial Identity Development: A Review of the Literature on Black Identity Development, White Identity Development, and Bi-Racial Identity Issues, joined the list of prominent racial theories produced by doctoral students at UMass, including Black identity (Bailey Jackson, 1976), Asian identity (Jean Kim, 1981) and White identity (Rita Hardiman, 1982). Wijeyesinghe's biracial identity model and its subsequent revision in 2012 were two of the earliest ecological models of Multiracial identity, and enabled Wijeyesinghe to become a cornerstone theorist in the emerging field of Multiracial and Critical Mixed Race Studies. Her work on Multiracial identity was adopted by the Anti-Defamation League in 2006 for its anti-bias curriculum.
Wijeyesinghe published five edited or co-edited volumes between 2001 and 2021, including two editions of New Perspectives on Racial Identity Development (NYU Press 2001, 2012) that she co-edited and contributed to with Bailey W. Jackson III, chair of her dissertation committee and former Dean of the School of Education. She also wrote articles on the application of racial identity theory to conflict resolution practices. In 2010 the focus of Wijeyesinghe's writing and work pivoted to intersectionality. From 2010-2021 she published book chapters and an edited volume on this topic, often collaborating with Susan Robb Jones, faculty member at The Ohio State University. Jones and Wijeyesinghe became prominent presenters on intersectionality at the National Conference on Race and Ethnicity (NCORE) and American College Personnel Association (ACPA). Wijeyesinghe returned to the topics of race and identity in her later books, Multiracial Experiences in Higher Education (co-edited with Marc Johnston-Guerrero, Stylus, 2021) and the Complexities of Race: Identity, Power, and Justice in an Evolving America (NYU Press, 2021). Based on the contributions made by her writing, Wijeyesinghe received the (inaugural) NCORE Award for Scholarship in 2017 and (with Johnston-Guerrero) the Multiracial Network of ACPA's Innovation Award in 2021. She was inducted into the ACPA Diamond Honoree Program in 2024.
As made evident by her over 150 sessions at national level conferences such as NCORE, ACPA, Teacher’s College Round Table, and Critical Mixed Race Studies, her edited or co-edited books, book chapters and journal articles, and her consulting practice spanning almost 40 years, Wijeyesinghe is an influential thinker in the fields of social identity, Multiracial issues, and the application of intersectionality to higher education.
