Dr. Athulasiri Samarakoon, Senior lecturer in Politics and International Studies at the Open University of Sri Lanka. He is the Unit Leader of the Politics and International Studies at the Department of Social Studies. OUSL. He obtained his first degree in International relations with a Second-Class upper division from the University of Colombo in 2004 and proceeded to obtain post-graduate qualification after working as a temporary assistant lecture at the department of International Relations.

In 2007, he completed MA in Politics (with Specialization in IR) at the School of International Studies, JNU, New Delhi. In 2009, he completed an M.Phil. in International Politics focusing his dissertation on cyber international relations. He joined the Open University of Sri Lanka in 2009 has been working their since then and completed the Ph.D. studies in International Politics at JNU in 2016. His Ph.D. thesis is titled “External balancing and small states; the case of Sri Lanka and was supervised by Prof. Rajesh Rajagopalan. He has published some journal articles several newspaper and web articles and two booklets. Currently he is involved in three major research works focusing on Sino-Sri Lanka relations, and democracy and hate speech in Sri Lanka.