Dr. Wathsala Athukorala is the Deputy Librarian at Sri Palee Campus, University of Colombo, Sri Lanka. She also serves as a Visiting Lecturer for the National Institute of Library and Information Sciences (NILLIS) and the Master’s Programme at Sri Palee Campus, and is the MPhil/PhD Coordinator at NILLIS.

With over two decades of experience in academic librarianship, research, and higher education, her scholarly work focuses on social media use in libraries, information-seeking behaviour, and public library leadership. She holds a PhD in Management in Library Science from Wuhan University, China.

Wathsala Athukorala is a recipient of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Experienced Researcher Fellowship (2023–2025), becoming the first librarian and the third academic from the Sri Lankan university system to receive this honour. During this fellowship, she has been affiliated with FernUniversität in Hagen, Germany.

Her accolades include the Best Paper Award at LEHSS-24 (Istanbul, 2024), University of Colombo Senate Awards for Research Excellence (2020, 2021), a University of Colombo Small Research Grant (2018), and an Asian Universities Alliance Conference Award (2019) to present her research in Beijing, China.

In addition to her research contributions, she actively serves on national and international editorial boards and as a reviewer for several scholarly journals.