Zumrat Salmorbekova

Zumrat Salmorbekova, Class 6 alum, began teaching a course on Monitoring and Evaluation for Peacebuilding Interventions offered to Peace Fellows in the 2019 Spring semester. This course presents the basic concepts of design, monitoring and evaluation, common processes, skills, and the practical application of concepts and methods in the peacebuilding field.

Zumrat is a specialist in designing, leading and managing evaluations of development and humanitarian programs, as well as assessments and research of a broad topical spectrum in international, cross-cultural, politically sensitive and conflict-prone contexts. Her fields of expertise include democratic governance, human rights, civil society, gender equality, women, peace and security, conflict prevention, humanitarian aid and development.

Born and raised in Kyrgyzstan, Zumrat graduated from Kyrgyz State University in 1995 with a major in history and social science, after which she joined the Central Asian think tank known as the Institute for Regional Studies. Her work at the Institute centered on issues of integration of Central Asian countries, the situation of ethnic minorities, religious radicalization, and gender equality. Zumrat has conducted a number of field researches on socio-political issues and analysis in the Ferghana Valley. As a project manager for UNIFEM (now UN Women), she established and piloted gender-sensitive early warning systems and monitored the socio-political dynamic in the region. She has authored and co-authored articles and chapter books on religious radicalization, human rights, and monitoring and evaluation. In addition to her education at the Kyrgyz State University, Zumrat attended a number of academic courses including Raoul Wallenberg Institute on Human Rights in Sweden, and Responding to Conflict in the UK.

As an independent consultant, Zumrat has led a number of programs and projects evaluations in Turkey, Jordan, Iraq, Lebanon, South Africa, Ukraine, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan which were supported by USAID, U.S. State Department, DFID, SDC, various UN-agencies, and DC and Europe-based international organizations. She has been the primary author of multiple evaluation and assessment reports, and briefed key stakeholders on key evaluation findings, good practices, lessons learned and actionable recommendations. Zumrat is also a USAID/CMM-certified Gender and Conflict Assessment Specialist. In 2014-2015 she served as an Interim Associate Director of the Center for Slavic, Eurasian and East European Studies at UNC-Chapel Hill.

In 2007, Zumrat was awarded a Rotary World Peace Fellowship and completed her Master’s degree in RUES from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, with concentrations in political science and international peace and development. Her Master’s thesis was devoted to a comparative examination of the implications of the key foreign policy interests of the U.S. and Russia in their use of force against the former Yugoslavia in 1999 and the Republic of Georgia in August 2008.