Tharaka Amarasinghe is a Project Manager and Statistician at LIRNEasia. He specialises in survey and sample design. He also leads statistical analysis for all LIRNEasia’s survey research projects. Some of Tharaka’s current and past work includes: AfterAccess: A series of nationally representative surveys in Sri Lanka, India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Nepal, and Cambodia covering 15,000 households and individuals. He has conducted nationally representative studies on the PWD population in Sri Lanka and Nepal and a nationally representative study on SME’s in Sri Lanka.
Namali Premawardhana worked as a Communications Coordinator at LIRNEasia between 2017 and 2020 where she drove organisational communication activities at the organisation. This included developing communications material, organising events, managing LIRNEasia’s online presence, production of LIRNEasia’s annual report, monitoring coverage, and liaising with media inter alia. Before joining us, she worked as Assistant Editor at Echelon Magazine. She has also worked as a freelance feature writer for The Sunday Times of Sri Lanka since 2007. Namali has an MBA from the University of Derby through a researched thesis on Digital Journalism in Sri Lanka, and a BA in English from the University of Peradeniya.
Chiranthi Rajapakse was a Research Manager (Legal and Policy) at LIRNEasia. She is an Attorney at Law with a Bachelor of Laws (LLB) from the University of London (International Programmes), and holds a Diploma in Human Rights from the Institute of Human Rights. She has also completed a Master’s in Human Rights and Democratisation from the Faculty of Law, University of Colombo. Her postgraduate research explored legislation prohibiting hate speech in Sri Lanka and the rise of online hate speech targeting minority communities in the post-war period. Chiranthi brought extensive experience as a researcher, writer, and project manager.
Azamat Ababakirov was a research manager at LIRNEasia. Prior to joining LIRNEasia he worked at Goodhope Holdings in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, as Assistant Manager, Downstream Business Development. He has also worked in Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy (LKYSPP), National University of Singapore (NUS) as a Research Associate and Institute of Water Policy, National University of Singapore (NUS) as a Graduate Research Assistant.
Ayesha served as a Senior Research Manager at LIRNEasia. Her core areas of interest lay at the intersection of technology and inclusion in the Global South, with a focus on the future of work. She had over 19 years of extensive experience in this field, having designed, managed and led numerous research projects in the South and Southeast Asian region for clients such as IDRC (Canada), the World Bank, the Ford Foundation, the GSM Association, the Asian Development Bank, and GIZ, among others, and led LIRNEasia’s gender work. She managed a regional hub for research on the future of work in LMIC Asia, as part of IDRC’s FutureWORKS initiative toward an inclusive and sustainable future of work. In her most recent research, she documented how digital technologies are changing work opportunities and contexts in particular for women in South Asia.