Zubayra Shamseden

Zubayra Shamseden is Chinese Outreach Coordinator at the Uyghur Human Rights Project (UHRP), a documentation and advocacy group based in Washington, D.C. She has been campaigning for the human rights and political freedom of the Uighur people since the late 1980s. Before joining UHRP, Shamseden worked as an Information Officer, Researcher, and Translator at the International Uyghur Human Rights and Democracy Foundation (IUHRDF). She has worked in multicultural education and community liaison for nonprofit, academic, and government organizations in Australia and the U.S. for over two decades. Shamseden is a 2016-2018 Fellow at the Institute for Global Engagement’s (IGE) Center for Women, Faith & Leadership (CWFL). She has a Bachelor’s degree in Library and Information Science from East China Normal University in Shanghai, a certification in Chinese from the Industrial University of Xinjiang, a diploma in Russian language and literature from the State University of Eastern Kazakhstan, and a graduate diploma in Information Studies and a Master’s degree in International Studies from the University of South Australia, where she focused on the modern history of Uighur human rights. She is fluent in English, Uyghur, Chinese, Uzbek, and Russian, and has a working knowledge of Turkish.