Kanaganayakam was a lecturer in the Department of English at the
University of Jaffna before joining the
University of British Columbia on a
Commonwealth scholarship, receiving a
Ph.D. degree in 1985 after producing a
thesis, supervised by
W. H. New, on the writings of
Zulfikar Ghose. Kanaganayakam joined the
University of Toronto's Department of English in 1989 to research and teach Commonwealth literature. Appointed a professor in 2002, he went on to become director of the Centre for South Asian Studies at the
Munk School of Global Affairs and co-ordinator of the independent studies program at
Trinity College, Toronto. Kanaganayakam was a founding member of the
Tamil Literary Garden and the Toronto Tamil Studies Conference. On the morning of November 22, 2014, Kanaganayakam was inducted to the
Royal Society of Canada as a fellow in
Quebec City. That evening, as he went to a celebratory dinner in
Montreal, he suffered a heart attack and died. ==Works==