[1] Zeshan obtained an MA at the University of Cologne in 1996 and her PhD in linguistics from the same institution in 2000.
[1] Between 1999 and 2006 she held two postdoctoral positions: first at the Research Centre for Linguistic Typology in Canberra, Australia, and then (from 2003) at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in Nijmegen in the Netherlands.
[2] In 2015, Zeshan was appointed an honorary Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) for "services to higher education and the international deaf community" as part of the 2015 Special Honours.
[4] Zeshan is a leading researcher in the field of sign language typology, and has worked on such phenomena as kinship terms, negation, possession, quantification, and questions.
[1][2] Zeshan is also politically active, having stood as a Green Party MEP candidate in the North West England constituency in 2014, as well as in local council elections.