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. She served as a National Research Consultant with the Constitutional Assembly Secretariat, Parliament of Sri Lanka, during the 2015–2017 constitutional reform process. She also conducted research for the Lakshman Kadirgamar Institute for International Relations and Strategic Studies. Prior to joining LIRNEasia, she worked with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in Sri Lanka on projects related to social cohesion and reconciliation, including initiatives addressing online misinformation and hate speech.
At LIRNEasia, Chiranthi led a project funded by IDRC focused on understanding the effectiveness of countermeasures to information disorder in Sri Lanka. She also managed the ‘Harnessing Data for Democratic Development in South and Southeast Asia’ project, which aimed to explore and document data governance policies and laws, identify ecosystem gaps, and build the capacity of regional researchers and professionals. This initiative covered Thailand, the Philippines, Indonesia, India, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka.
In addition to her policy work, Chiranthi is a published fiction writer with two short story collections and shares her writing on https://chiranthi.medium.com/