Dimuthu Attanayake

Dimuthu Attanayake is a full-time, independent journalist from Colombo, Sri Lanka, reporting on social justice, environment and wildlife, health, business, economics, tech, and politics. Her work has appeared in a number of international publications, including Foreign Policy, Deutsche Welle, South China Morning Post, and Thomson Reuters Foundation News. 

Since the beginning of 2023, Attanayake has been reporting on the harrowing ground realities of the debilitating economic crisis in Sri Lanka: how it disrupts livelihoods, uproots businesses and industries, and denies basic human rights of marginalized groups, such as pregnant women, children, and transgender people. 

In 2018, for her reporting on reparations for families of the people who went missing during the 1980s political uprising in Sri Lanka, Attanayake was shortlisted for the Young Journalist Award by the Thomson Foundation and the Foreign Press Association in London. In the same year, for reporting on how coal power affects the health of nearby communities, she won a merit award as the Environmental Reporter of the Year 2018 from the Sri Lanka Press Institute and the Editors' Guild of Sri Lanka.

More recently, she was one of the three global winners of the Ocean Storytelling Grant offered by the Save Our Seas Foundation. She was also one of the 2022 Falling Walls Journalist fellows. 

Attanayake holds a bachelor's in economics and finance from the University of London.