Anuradhi Jayasinghe

I am a consultant researcher from Sri Lanka on Environmental Management, focusing on human-wildlife conflicts. After completing my Bachelor’s degree in Sri Lanka in 2014, I started working as a research assistant for an international project by the University of Sussex based in Sri Lanka on small-scale fisheries livelihoods. From there onwards, I could practically engage with my passion for working for vulnerable communities and assist in delivering ground-level realities to scientific audiences to make inclusive decisions. Afterwards, as a consultant researcher, I joined a prestigious local NGO in Sri Lanka in 2017, the Law and Society Trust (LST). I expanded my horizons to work with fisheries communities and vulnerable farmers communities combating unsustainable development planning and climate change in Sri Lanka. My work in vulnerable Sri Lankan communities in the agricultural sector opened the opportunity for an Australia Awards scholarship in 2019 to sharpen my skills and knowledge in the environmental sector. I completed a Master of Environmental Management from the University of Queensland in Australia in 2020. After my Master’s studies, I continued to work in Sri Lanka but with expanded capacities in ecological, environmental and climate sciences. This paved the path to supporting the environmental policy development sector in Sri Lanka while working as a consultant researcher attached to LST by reporting, reviewing and engaging in environmental policy reforming dialogues in Sri Lanka. I also contributed to the preliminary studies on the Climate Disaster Risk Financing and Insurance (CDRFI) project with Chrysalis (an INGO in Sri Lanka) in 2022. Meanwhile, I successfully completed two projects to strengthen the livelihoods of marginalised women in selected districts in Sri Lanka through home gardening. I successfully secured two project grants from DFAT Australia to complete these projects. I am in the second year of my PhD at Griffith University, studying human-wildlife coexistence in Sri Lankan farming communities. I am a member of the IUCN Task Force for Human-Wildlife Conflict into Coexistence and am reviewing IUCN Green List Standards in search of gaps in coexistence, especially to reflect the ground realities of the Global South. I aim to develop a roadmap towards sustainable human-wildlife coexistence based on Green List standard review and fieldwork activities in Sri Lankan farming communities combating elephant conflicts. Meanwhile, I am a casual academic and academic adviser at the University of Queensland for landscape Ecology and sustainable development. I am also a research assistant attached to the Queensland University of Technology for the project on Women for One Health barriers study to understand the barriers faced by women and other underrepresented groups when participating in international One Health events.