Role
Ramani is a Lecturer in the Department of Management at NBS and teaches on a number of modules: International Strategic Management, Dynamic Entrepreneurship, and International Business Environment. Part of her role also includes supervising final year BA (Business) students with their research projects. Ramani gained her Bachelor of Arts Degree from the University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka, and went on to complete a Postgraduate Diploma in Translations from the Official Languages Department of Sri Lanka, and her second Post Graduate Diploma in Youth Partners in Development was achieved from the United Nations Development Programme in conjunction with the Youth Partners in Development in Sweden. The first of her two master’s degrees were in Sociology from the University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka followed by a Master of Science from Ulster University, United Kingdom.
Career overview
Before joining the NBS, Ramani used to work at the Ministry of Industrial Development and Official Languages Department of Sri Lanka for twelve years. She worked collaboratively with the Board of Investment, Department of Commerce and Tourism Board and Parliament of Sri Lanka in designing, implementing and evaluating a five-year Strategic Framework to assist and support SMEs. Ramani has also worked as a Programme Coordinator in the Poverty Eradication and Empowerment Division at the Sarvodaya Head Office in Sri Lanka where she contributed to the design, implementation and evaluation of the Five-year Strategic Framework. She has also worked as a teacher in the Princeton International School in Sri Lanka.
As an experienced qualitative researcher with more than thirty-years, Ramani has designed and implemented several Action Research Projects to improve the socio-cultural and economic situations in developing economies in Sri Lanka. This work now continues having received NBS Dean’s Bursary for her current PhD Research in women-owned micro-retail pop-ups in the UK. She has developed a Strategic Framework namely, the Pop-up Pathways which includes Participator Action-learning to support women micro-retail owners overcome from the challenges they faced.
Research areas
Ramani is motivated in her current research as a scholar in women-owned business by the need to be a significant contributor in Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in the UK retail market. Especially, to support the women micro-retail pop-up owners to survive in the UK retail market beyond five years as a solution for the declining British High-street market.