Chiranthi Rajapakse is a Research Manager (Legal and Policy), with LIRNEasia. Chiranthi is an Attorney at Law with a Bachelor of Laws Degree (LLB) from the University of London (International Programmes). She has a Diploma in Human Rights from the Institute of Human Rights and is currently completing a Master’s in Human Rights and Democratisation from the Faculty of Law, University of Colombo. Her research under this explores legislation prohibiting hate speech in Sri Lanka, and reasons for the increase in online hate speech against minority communities in the post war period.
Chiranthi has worked extensively as a researcher, writer and project manager. Her experience includes working as a National Research Consultant with the Constitutional Assembly Secretariat, Parliament of Sri Lanka, working on the Constitutional reform process that took place between 2015 and 2017. She also has also carried out research for the Lakshman Kadirgamar Institute for Strategic Relations and International Studies. Her most recent assignment was working with the United Nations Development programme in Sri Lanka on projects relating to social cohesion and reconciliation, including supporting initiatives focusing on combatting effects of online misinformation and hate speech.
Chiranthi’s work with LIRNEasia involves working on a project which aims to understand the effectiveness of methods to counter the information disorder in Sri Lanka (funded by IDRC), Chiranthi also manages the ‘Harnessing Data for Democratic Development in South and Southeast Asia’ project. The objective of Data for Development project includes the following: to explore and document existing and emerging data governance policies, laws, and bills in South and Southeast Asia, identify important gaps in the data governance ecosystem along with recommendations for addressing these, and improve the capacity of researchers and professionals working on data governance in the region. The project is being implemented in the following countries: Thailand, Philippines, Indonesia, India, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka.
Chiranthi also writes fiction and has published two collections of short stories. She blogs at https://chiranthi.medium.com/