Senuri Wijenayake

Dr Senuri Wijenayake is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Computing Technologies at RMIT University and an Australian Research Council DECRA Fellow. Her research sits at the intersection of human-computer interaction and social computing, exploring how platform design shapes user behaviour online — for better and for worse. Her doctoral work examined online social conformity, investigating how socio-psychological influences drive the way people behave in digital spaces. This work has since expanded into investigating the socio-technical, personal, contextual, and cultural drivers behind technology-facilitated abuse and online harm — and how design can be used to prevent or minimise these. More recently, she has focused on co-developing design strategies and policy guidelines to better protect women and gender-diverse users from online abuse. She brings extensive experience in user-led, participatory research methods, including trauma-informed co-design practices that centre the lived experiences of those most affected by online harm. She is a member of RMIT's Social Equity Research Centre (Gender and Social Change) and the Digital Ethnography Research Centre.