On behalf of the Organizing Committee, I would like to cordially welcome distinguished guests, keynote speaker, plenary speakers, delegates, track chairs, session chairs, discussants, presenters, and participants to the 3rd International Research Symposium on Social Sciences and Humanities (IRSSSH-2020) organized by the National Centre for Advances in Social Sciences (NCAS). Theme of this year's international symposium is ‘Advances in Social Sciences and the Humanities: challenges and opportunities’, which has drawn the attention of academia, businesses, and policymakers.

The world is in a new normal situation, and the higher education programs, institutions, and researchers face challenges related to literacy and skills, employability, inadequate entrepreneurship, and sustainable development goals. These challenges can be overcome by means such as innovative thinking, acceleration of quantity and quality of research, collaborative works, and sharing resources among individuals, scholars, organizations, and nations. The new normalcy has generated negative outcomes; however, we should focus on the opportunities generated by the situation. Therefore, the impact of the Covid-19 health crisis on Social Sciences and Humanities is set as the theme of the keynote speech of the conference and a distinguished researcher on Social Sciences Em. Prof. Siri Hettige was invited to deliver the keynote speech by considering his expertise in these fields. I should be thankful to Prof. Siri Hettige for acceptance of our invitation. Besides, three speakers were invited to deliver plenary speeches at the inception of three parallel tracks on: Social Sciences, Education and Humanities, and Sustainable Dvelopment. I was appointed as the Visiting Fellow from August 2020 to lead the team conducting this International Symposium and to publish the Journal of the NCAS. We called abstracts for this symposium in September 2020 and received more than 300 abstracts. After implementing a rigorous blind review process by connecting almost all universities and research institutes in Sri Lanka, we accepted around 200 abstracts.

We notified authors to submit the revised abstract with full papers, and finally, we accepted and published 102 abstracts in this Volume. Any reader can request access to full papers from NCAS. I guarantee that majority of the research articles submitted to this International Symposium can be further developed and published in indexed journals. However, proper acknowledgment to this symposium should be given. I would like to express my sincere thanks to Senior Professor (Mrs) Janitha A. Liyanage, Acting Director of NCAS, and Mr. Sampath Chandrasena, Coordinator of the Symposium and his team at NCAS for providing excellent support to make this symposium a reality. Even though the Covd-19 health crisis impacted to delay of the symposium by one month, we were able to follow our rigorous academic screening processes and publish 102 research papers. I must thank all authors, the keynote speaker, plenary speakers, reviewers, session chairs, and discussants for their support in conducting this symposium. Also, I would like to appreciate the immense support provided by the editorial and the organizing committee, as this symposium would not have been held without their excellent support under the prevailing Covid- 19 situation. I wish a radiant future for paper presenters of this symposium.