Lasara Kariyawasam

Lasara Kariyawasam is a Chartered Psychologist and Research Associate for the Centre for Criminology at the University of Oxford. She is presently working on a British Academy funded research project on "Police investigations of sextortion reports: Offence patterns, officers’ perceptions of victims and victim satisfaction"". Her main research interests lie within Clinical and Forensic Psychology. She has specific interests in cross-cultural research and protecting vulnerable individuals from online risks and harms and has carried out several published research on compassion and self-harming in relation to cross-cultural contexts, post-natal depression, and ethics in mental health. She was previously engaged in the "BeGood Project" within the Department of Psychiatry and Neuroscience at the University of Oxford, where Lasara and her team conducted research on "Adolescents' perspectives on data sharing in the age of predictive psychiatry". Lasara is also currently working as a Lecturer in Psychology at the University of Southampton.

Lasara completed her PhD at the University of Southampton on exploring and evaluating the cross-cultural applicability of compassion-based interventions. She also completed an MSc in Clinical Psychology at the University of Southampton and received the Dean's List Awards for the degree average, part average, and dissertation performance in addition to passing her MSc with a Distinction. During her MSc, Lasara also worked as an Honorary Assistant Psychologist for the Learning Disability Team at the Southern Health NHS Trust.