Professor Afreen Huq
Details
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Department: Management
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Campus: City Campus Australia
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afreen.huq@rmit.edu.au
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ORCID:
0000-0003-2096-3990
Open to
- Masters Research or PhD student supervision
About
Afreen Huq is Professor at the School of Management in RMIT University. Her research in women’s entrepreneurship has a strong empirical base and is cross disciplinary in approach with an emphasis on impact. As a researcher she specializes in how gender identity and socio-cultural factors influencing the aspiration, acceptability and feasibility of business-ownership shape women’s entrepreneurial behaviour and approach to growth. Afreen researches this phenomenon on women entrepreneurs in both developed countries as well as in culturally restrictive societies. She is also interested in exploring identity reconstruction, socialisation, and resilience of migrant and refugee women entrepreneurs.
Afreen has 20 years of teaching and research experience in the discipline of management and entrepreneurship. She has taught Foundations of Entrepreneurship, Social Entrepreneurship, New Venture Creation, Creativity and Innovation, Management, Business Communication, Multinational Enterprise Management, and HRM in universities in Bangladesh, UK and Australia. Afreen has authored more than 30 research-based articles.
Along with her academic experience, Afreen has over 6 years of experience as programme manager and gender specialist in several multi-donor funded international development projects operating in Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan and North-east India aimed at promoting entrepreneurship for poverty alleviation and economic growth.
Academic positions
- Professor
- RMIT University
- School of Management
- Melbourne, Australia
- 1 Jan 2025 – Present
- Associate Professor
- RMIT University
- Melbourne, Australia
- 14 Dec 2018 – 31 Dec 2024
- Senior Lecturer
- RMIT University
- Melbourne, Australia
- 2 Jan 2012 – 28 Dec 2018
- Program Director, Bachelor of Business (Entrepreneurship), School of Management
- RMIT University
- Melbourne, Australia
- May 2009 – 30 Dec 2011
- Lecturer, School of Management
- RMIT University
- Melbourne, Australia
- Jan 2007 – 30 Dec 2011
- Associate Professor, Department of Management Studies
- University of Dhaka
- Dhaka, Bangladesh
- Aug 2005 – Oct 2005
- Gender Specialist
- KATALYST
- (The project is funded by Department for International Development, UK (DFID), Swiss Agency for Development and Co-operation (SDC), and Swedish International Development Agency (SIDA) and is managed by Swisscontact and German Agency for Technical Co-operation (GTZ) International services).
- , Bangladesh
- Apr 2003 – Sep 2003
- Assistant Professor, Department of Management Studies
- University of Dhaka
- Dhaka, Bangladesh
- Sep 2001 – Jul 2005
- Assistant Professor, School of Business
- Independent University
- Dhaka, Bangladesh
- Jan 1999 – Aug 2001
- Sessional Academic
- University of Stirling
- Stirling, United Kingdom
- Feb 1998 – Jun 2998
Non-academic positions
- Gender Specialist
- KATALYST
- (The project is funded by Department for International Development, UK (DFID), Swiss Agency for Development and Co-operation (SDC), and Swedish International Development Agency (SIDA) and is managed by Swisscontact and German Agency for Technical Co-operation (GTZ) International services).
- , Bangladesh
- Apr 2003 – Sep 2003
- Deputy Program Manager and Gender Specialist
- Business Development Services Program (BDSP)
- , Bangladesh
- Aug 2001 – Mar 2003
Supervisor projects
- Exploring the Synergy of Entrepreneurial Orientation and Business Continuity Management for Enhanced Long-Term Success of SMEs: the Mediating Role of Corporate Governance
- 14 Feb 2024
- Exploring the Impact of Entrepreneurial Ecosystems on Social Entrepreneurship
- 17 Mar 2023
- Family Business Succession and Social Capital: Next-Generation Family Business Management In Southern Vietnam
- 1 Jan 2022
- Feeling, Thinking, Doing: A Time Sensitive Self-Regulation Framework for Exploring Entrepreneur Journeys
- 1 Feb 2018
- The Effect of Government of Pakistan¿s Common Facility Centre (CFC) Program on Small and Medium Enterprise (SME) Competitiveness: The Role of SMEs' Dynamic Capabilities
- 7 Dec 2016
- Creating Space, Place and Legitimacy: the Use of Social Media by Saudi Women Entrepreneurs in Micro and Small Enterprises
- 10 Nov 2014
Teaching interests
Since the beginning of her academic career in Australia and at RMIT in 2007, Afreen's academic identity has been manifested in her strong commitment and passion for a supportive and inclusive learning environment enabling students to develop constructivist learning skills and the confidence to use them. Over the past 17 years, she has transformed entrepreneurship education at RMIT through curriculum innovations that include ‘work-based learning’ in Social Entrepreneurship; ‘design thinking’ led entrepreneurship pedagogy; and using social media as a learning tool to enhance digitally enabled learning experience of students.
Afreen's approach to learning and teaching is well aligned with RMIT’s Signature Pedagogy - Active, Applied and Authentic (AAA) as outlined in RMIT’s Education plan to 2025. Over the course of her career, her contributions in the education domain specifically include:
• Reimagining, redefining and delivering entrepreneurship curriculum at RMIT that creates an inclusive and shared learning journey to realising better educational outcomes.
• Using evidence-based recommendations from her scholarship of L&T, to transform the School of Management’s approach to L&T as both a “process” and a “method” that enables students to go beyond understanding, knowing, and talking to using, applying, and acting (as captured in RMIT’s founding motto “A skilled hand, a cultivated mind”),
• Embedding across courses critical employability skills that are global in nature, through curriculum innovation, authentic assessments, digitally enabled learning experiences and strong engagement with industry partners and the community.
Research interests
Women’s entrepreneurship, Gender in business, Refugee entrepreneurs, Migrant women, fast-growth entrepreneurs, Entrepreneurship education.
Afreen's research in women’s entrepreneurship and curriculum innovation has a strong empirical base and is cross disciplinary in approach with an emphasis on impact. Afreen draws on a number of disciplinary perspectives including entrepreneurship theory, feminist theory, social constructionist theory and entrepreneurship education theory.
Afreen studies how gender identity and socio-cultural factors influencing the aspiration, acceptability and feasibility of business-ownership shape women’s entrepreneurial behaviour and approach to growth. Afreen researches this phenomenon on women entrepreneurs in both developed countries as well as in culturally restrictive societies. She is also interested in exploring identity reconstruction, socialisation, and resilience of migrant and refugee women entrepreneurs.
Afreen’s research in curriculum innovation rests on evidence that learning can be significantly enhanced when the locus of the learning process is shifted from the educator to the student; the entrepreneurship curriculum is reimagined and redefined in ways that reduces the hierarchical ‘barriers’ between educators and students; and creates an inclusive and shared learning journey underpinning a human-centred, empathetic approach to realising better educational outcomes.
Her work has been published in numerous scholarly journals, including Journal of Small Business Management, Women’s Studies International Forum, International Migration, Education+ Training, Higher Education Research & Development and other academic publications.
