[3] Formerly the principal of two women's colleges in Pakistan and a participant in revising Pakistan's national curriculum, she was accused of being a foreigner and forced to leave the country in 2015 by death threats from Islamic extremists after being accused of working to secularize school textbooks.
Her dissertation, Islam, Democracy and Social Studies Education: A Quest for Possibilities, was supervised by Terry Carson.
[6] In 2009, Dean was appointed as the principal of Kinnaird College in Lahore, a prestigious women's institution in Pakistan.
[10] In 2014, she left St. Joseph's College to join the VM Institute for Education, Karachi, as its director.
She was denounced at the April All-Parties Conference at the Karachi Press Club organized by the Jamaat-e-Islami and its student wing, the Islami Jamiat Talaba.