Naazima Kamardeen holds a Doctor of Philosophy degree from the University of Colombo and a Master of Laws degree in International Legal Studies from Georgetown University, where she studied as a Fulbright scholar. She is an Attorney-at-Law and Chair of Commercial Law at the University of Colombo. 

Naazima has been researching the legal regime governing cultural property taken from Sri Lanka, specifically during the colonial era. She uses postcolonial views, Third World Approaches to International Law and theories of historical injustice to challenge the traditional legal norms surrounding the retention of cultural property by former colonisers. Her research on cultural property has included the statue of Tara currently held at the British Museum in London, and the Cannon of Kandy. She continues to explore the inequality between researchers from the formerly colonised, and former colonisers in determining the research agenda of cultural property. 

Naazima is currently the lead researcher in a project titled “Whose Law?”, a collaboration between the University of Colombo, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, the World Museum Leiden and the Netherlands-Sri Lanka Foundation, funded by the Dutch Research Council.