Dr. Chathurika Kannangara

Chathurika Kannangara is an Associate Teaching Professor in the Department of Psychology. She is also a registered Counsellor with BACP. Chathurika is a Fellow with Higher Education Academy, UK. Her teaching areas are positive psychology and counselling. She is the programme leader for MSc Counselling and Positive Psychology. She has previously taught degree programmes in India and Sri Lanka before starting HE sector teaching in the UK since 2014, currently leading number of modules on positive psychology and counselling programmes.

Her primary research interest lies within the broad and developing domain of positive psychology applications in wellbeing. Her PhD focus is to develop a ‘thriving dyslexia model’, where ‘resilience’ and ‘grit’ were two main focus areas of her theoretical model and intervention. She is currently conducting a number of studies with the aim of developing ‘resilience’ and ‘grit’ among university, college and school students. She is now involved in one of the projects called Hummingbird in collaboration with other colleagues and a local charity. Hummingbird project delivers psychological wellbeing interventions to secondary and primary school children in the North West. In addition, there are number of other funded projects in the area of wellbeing and resilience that she leads and collaborate. Chathurika was the recipient of Heinz von Foerster Award 2013 and has also won other international awards for her contribution to research.