Zinat joined ICPR in February 2025 and is currently researching prison labour as part of the World Prison Research Programme's Unlocking Potential project. She has a background in international human rights law, and public international law more broadly.
Before joining ICPR, Zinat worked at the University of Nottingham Human Rights Law Centre on a range of human rights projects. These included prisonDEATH, which examined the international human rights framework governing deaths in prison, and Life Imprisonment Worldwide (LIW), an international comparative project on the use of life imprisonment globally. She co-authored Informal life imprisonment: A policy briefing on this harsh, hidden sentence, on sentences which are not explicitly called life sentences but can result in lifelong detention, and Alternatives to the death penalty: Information pack, an overview of sanctions used as alternatives to the death penalty, with a particular focus on life and long-term imprisonment.
Zinat has also worked at Rights and Security International, contributing to policy-oriented research and advocacy on citizenship-stripping and (non)repatriation in national security contexts, and at REDRESS, where she supported projects on the prohibition of torture as a fellow of the Bonavero Institute of Human Rights at the University of Oxford.
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, Legon.