Dilini has a background in ecology, natural resource management, and agricultural development policy. She holds a PhD in environmental management from The University of Queensland, Australia (2014). Before joining the MIDLAND team, Dilini did consultancy work for the CGIAR research centers IWMI and WorldFish undertaking projects in research monitoring and evaluation, institutional and policy analysis, and developing decision support systems.

In the MIDLAND project, Dilini focuses on transnational investment decisions in agriculture and forestry across emerging agricultural frontiers, with a specific focus on Southern and Eastern Africa. Her work will contribute to understanding how and why investors choose to move across national borders, potentially driving emerging frontiers and whether these decisions compose of and or justify the conditions hypothesized to drive frontier emergence.