Mahreen Mamoon is a fourth-year Ph.D. candidate in Curriculum Studies at Purdue University's College of Education. Her research centers on the lived experience of separated motherhood in academia, positioning it as a deeply underexplored site of both pain and power within institutional structures. Through autoethnography and public pedagogy, Mahreen interrogates how race, gender, nation, and motherhood collide in the everyday life of a South Asian woman scholar navigating U.S. academia while physically distanced from her children due to patriarchal influence.

Mahreen’s work draws from intersectional feminism, Mother-Scholar theory, and de/colonial diasporic thought to challenge Eurocentric norms of care, presence, and academic productivity. She is the originator of the concept of “Un-Mothering”, a term that captures the affective and structural dislocations experienced by diasporic mothers whose caregiving is interrupted by visa regimes, economic pressure, or educational pursuit. Her dissertation, “Unmothering in Academia: An Autoethnographic Inquiry into Public Pedagogies of Maternal Expectations”, blends vignette, theory, and resistance as method.

Originally from Bangladesh, Mahreen holds a BBA in Marketing, an MSc in International Marketing from Queen Mary, University of London (UK), and an M.Ed. in Curriculum & Instruction from the University of Dhaka. She served as Assistant Professor of Entrepreneurship and Advertising at BRAC University for over 15 years and spent seven years as a Core Skills Teacher Trainer for the British Council’s “Connecting Classrooms” project.