Mama Ph.D. Across Borders

• In Event: Division by Epistemic Oppression, Reparation through Restorative Pedagogies

Proposal

This autoethnographic piece explores the experience of being an international doctoral student mother navigating academic life in the United States. While research on doctoral student mothers has expanded in recent years, it often remains limited in three ways: by focusing on domestic contexts, by treating mothers as a homogeneous group, and by framing motherhood as an obstacle to academic success (Brown & Watson, 2010; Mirick & Wladkowski, 2018; Trepal et al., 2014). Such approaches reflect forms of epistemic oppression, where the diverse knowledge and contributions of mothers are overlooked. Drawing on Yosso’s (2005) community cultural wealth framework, I challenge deficit-based narratives that frame motherhood as a barrier to academic success. Instead, I draw on my lived experiences as an international doctoral mother as sources of aspirational, familial, and resistant capital and engage with questions of voice and justice in academic spaces. Positioning myself as both subject and researcher, I recognize how my standpoint as a mother, scholar, and international woman of color informs what knowledge is valued and silenced.
Through reflection, I examine how I persist in a demanding Western academic environment while raising children, sustaining educational goals, and navigating cultural and institutional constraints. Yosso’s (2005) framework allows me to recognize the value of the knowledge and resources I bring as a mother, scholar, and woman of color. In doing so, I critique the epistemic oppression embedded within U.S. higher education, where dominant knowledge systems marginalize the voices of those outside the normative ideals. I believe that by affirming cultural wealth and embracing diverse forms of knowledge, higher education can move beyond inequities and cultivate spaces of dialogue, solidarity, and cohesion.

Author

• Ainur Jumagaliyeva, University of Minnesota - Twin Cities