Full Name
Dr. Kiara Wickremasinghe
Job Title
Research Fellow
Company
CAMHRA, SOAS
Speaker Bio
Dr Kiara Wickremasinghe is a Sri Lankan-British anthropologist, mental health practitioner, and musician (opera singer, violinist, and composer).
She is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Centre for Anthropology and Mental Health Research in Action (CAMHRA) at SOAS University of London. Her PhD in Anthropology at SOAS (2025) formed part of an ESRC-funded study of ‘Peer-supported Open Dialogue’, a social network approach to psychiatric crisis care which underwent its first randomised controlled trial in England. Towards this, she trained and worked in a London NHS Trust as an Open Dialogue practitioner and is currently part of a trainer cohort supporting the roll-out of ‘Peer-supported Open Dialogue’ across NHS Trusts.
Kiara is broadly interested in the concept of ‘lived experience’ in mental health care and the potential of arts-based interventions for enhancing wellbeing in cultural contexts where talking about mental health may be difficult or stigmatised. She was awarded a Birkbeck/Wellcome Trust IFRC grant (2025) and CAMHRA Momentum grant (2026) to conduct pilot studies using ‘operatic ethnography’ to explore and respond to Sri Lanka’s youth mental health crisis.
Kiara is also an opera singer and was selected as a Pegasus Opera Mentee for 2026-2027. She holds an LTCL in Singing Performance from Trinity College of Music London (2023) and studied at Morley Opera School (2025-2026), where she performed roles including Juliette (Gounod’s Roméo et Juliette), Pallade (Gluck’s Paride ed Elena) and Gretel (Humperdinck’s Hänsel und Gretel). In Sri Lanka, she gave her debut recital at the Russian House in Colombo (2024) and was cast as Vijjulatha in the Sri Lankan fusion opera Tharana Sigiri (2026). She is also a visiting first violinist with the Symphony Orchestra of Sri Lanka and will make her operatic debut with the orchestra in its upcoming season.
She is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Centre for Anthropology and Mental Health Research in Action (CAMHRA) at SOAS University of London. Her PhD in Anthropology at SOAS (2025) formed part of an ESRC-funded study of ‘Peer-supported Open Dialogue’, a social network approach to psychiatric crisis care which underwent its first randomised controlled trial in England. Towards this, she trained and worked in a London NHS Trust as an Open Dialogue practitioner and is currently part of a trainer cohort supporting the roll-out of ‘Peer-supported Open Dialogue’ across NHS Trusts.
Kiara is broadly interested in the concept of ‘lived experience’ in mental health care and the potential of arts-based interventions for enhancing wellbeing in cultural contexts where talking about mental health may be difficult or stigmatised. She was awarded a Birkbeck/Wellcome Trust IFRC grant (2025) and CAMHRA Momentum grant (2026) to conduct pilot studies using ‘operatic ethnography’ to explore and respond to Sri Lanka’s youth mental health crisis.
Kiara is also an opera singer and was selected as a Pegasus Opera Mentee for 2026-2027. She holds an LTCL in Singing Performance from Trinity College of Music London (2023) and studied at Morley Opera School (2025-2026), where she performed roles including Juliette (Gounod’s Roméo et Juliette), Pallade (Gluck’s Paride ed Elena) and Gretel (Humperdinck’s Hänsel und Gretel). In Sri Lanka, she gave her debut recital at the Russian House in Colombo (2024) and was cast as Vijjulatha in the Sri Lankan fusion opera Tharana Sigiri (2026). She is also a visiting first violinist with the Symphony Orchestra of Sri Lanka and will make her operatic debut with the orchestra in its upcoming season.
Speaking At
