Sanjana Hattotuwa

Research Fellow in Dunedin, New Zealand

Sanjana Hattotuwa

Research Fellow in Dunedin, New Zealand

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I am a recipient of Ashoka and Rotary World Peace Foundation fellowships, as well as the first TED Fellow from Sri Lanka. Since 2001, I have led the integration of technology into peacebuilding efforts.

In 2007, I founded and continued to curate until June 2020, the award-winning Groundviews, Sri Lanka's first citizen journalism website. I created, and curated South Asia's first Twitter, and Facebook accounts for civic media, and election violence monitoring.

Across five continents, and for over two decades, I have contributed significantly to information management strategies and digital security in challenging human rights contexts.

Areas of expertise include disinformation, malign influence operations, civic media, information disorders, new media literacy, web activism, digital security for activists, and online advocacy initiatives.

I completed doctoral studies at the University of Otago, New Zealand, looking at the symbiotic relationship between offline unrest and online instigation of hate and harm in Sri Lanka and, in the aftermath of the Christchurch massacre in 2019, facilitated by leading research based on New Zealand's first ever Data for Good grant by Twitter.

I am presently Research Director at the The Disinformation Project in New Zealand, and Special Advisor at the ICT4Peace Foundation in Switzerland.

  • Work
    • Research Fellow
  • Education
    • University of Delhi
    • University of Queensland
    • University of Otago