(Travor) T Murai

Biography

Travor Murai is about to complete his PhD studies at the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS) of Erasmus University Rotterdam. The ethnographic PhD thesis explores how the fragile and volatile political context of Zimbabwe, global funding rules, conditionalities and dependencies, and local NGO capacities and constraints influence the nature and extent to which the rights based approaches can be operationalized. The thesis uses the case of local NGOs and groups advocating for the sexual rights of Lesbians, Gays, Bisexuals, Transgender, and Intersex (LGBTI) people in Zimbabwe. Travor is with the National University of Science and Technology (NUST) in Zimbabwe teaching Masters in Development Studies courses that include rights based programming, civil society and research methods. He has previously worked for local NGOs in a wide range of areas, including human rights of students and their academic freedoms, elections, politically and historically marginalized groups, child and adolescent health and rights, sexual and reproductive health and rights and sexual rights of LGBTI people. He undertakes work as an independent organizational development practitioner for local NGOs. His area of expertise, research interest and passion are human rights based approaches and programming, civil society studies and governance, gender and sexuality studies and programming and child protection. Travor is a member, at different levels, of a number of local NGOs working on sexual rights, child protection and gender. He obtained an advanced Masters Degree in Cultural Anthropology and Development Studies (cum-laude) at Katholieke Universiteit Leuven in Belgium and MSc in Development studies (distinction) at NUST in Zimbabwe, a Post Graduate Diploma in Governance at ISS and a BSc Hons in Sociology at the University of Zimbabwe.