Zinat joined the Institute for Crime & Justice Policy Research (ICPR) in February 2025 as part of the World Prison Research Programme. She has a background in international human rights law.
Before joining ICPR, Zinat worked for three years at the University of Nottingham’s Human Rights Law Centre, contributing to various human rights projects, including prisonDEATH and Life Imprisonment Worldwide Revisited (LIW). As part of LIW, which examines the use of life imprisonment globally, she co-authored Informal life imprisonment: A policy briefing on this harsh, hidden sentence, exploring sentences which are not explicitly called ‘life imprisonment’ but which can nevertheless result in lifelong detention.
Zinat has previously worked at Rights and Security International, contributing to policy-oriented research and advocacy on the use of citizenship-stripping and (non)repatriation in national security policies, and at REDRESS, where she supported projects on the prohibition of torture as a fellow of the Bonavero Institute of Human Rights.
She holds a Bachelor of Civil Law (BCL) from the University of Oxford, an LLB (Hons) from Queen Mary University of London, and a BSc in Psychology from the University of Ghana.