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In May, the Research Symposium on Numbers and Narratives brought together scholars from around the world—including Brazil, France, Greece, Poland, Sweden, the United States, and of course the United Kingdom—to explore the lives and legacies of women in mathematics. The event also marked International Women in Mathematics Day, celebrated on the birthday of Maryam Mirzakhani, the first woman to receive the Fields Medal in mathematics, awarded in 2014. It was a day of deeply generative exchanges across disciplines, geographies, and generations. The setting—Senate House Library, home to Augustus De Morgan’s collection—further enriched the atmosphere with its emotional and genealogical resonance.
Opening Reflections: Numbers and Narratives: The end or the beginning?
Following warm words of welcome from Professor Wendy Thompson, Vice-Chancellor of the University of London, and Lucy Evans, Head of Collections at Senate House Library, I opened the symposium with a presentation marking the culmination of my three-year project on the feminist genealogies of women in mathematics. Rather than delivering a comprehensive overview, I offered a selection of highlights that traced the project’s evolution. My aim was not to close but to open—to create space for thinking differently about mathematics, its histories, and its possible futures. [follow the link for more details and the slides presentation]
Key note Lecture: Do women count? Yet?
A highlight of the day was the keynote by Valerie Walkerdine, Distinguished Research Professor Emerita in the School of Social Sciences, Cardiff University, UK. In its layered engagement with memory, method, and marginalization, her keynote beautifully exemplified the kind of feminist archival re-imagining this project seeks to cultivate. It reminded us that to ask “who counts?” is also to ask how we count, what we preserve, and what we let slip through the cracks of history and science. [follow the link for more details and the slides presentation]
Extending the question of who and what counts, Lovisa Sumpter, Professor of Mathematics Education at Stockholm University, challenged one of the most persistent yet invisible exclusions in the history of mathematics: the erasure of women who were never recognized as mathematicians. This exclusion was not due to a lack of skill or contribution, but because dominant definitions of mathematics—and of who qualifies as a mathematician—have long been shaped by narrow, masculinist ideals centered on pure, abstract knowledge. [follow the link for more details and the slides presentation]
Dr Odile Chatirichvili, a postdoc scholar in the Université de Toulouse, France offered a timely, nuanced investigation into how women mathematicians’ life stories are written and circulated today. She asked vital questions: How do social representations shape narrative forms—and vice versa? What happens when women narrate lives in a discipline still marked by gendered opacity? And can such narratives disrupt the masculinized prestige of mathematics itself? [follow the link for more details]
Introduction to the De Morgan Library and Display from the De Morgan Library, facilitated by Dr Karen Attar, curator of rare books and University Art at the Senate House Library
The morning session concluded with a compelling presentation on the De Morgan Library, now housed at Senate House Library. We were introduced to the rich history and significance of the collection, accompanied by a visual display of selected highlights that brought its contents vividly to life. Central to the presentation was the legacy of Augustus De Morgan (1806–1871), the influential mathematician and historian of mathematics whose personal library forms the core of the collection. Comprising nearly 3,800 books and pamphlets published between 1474 and 1870, this remarkable assemblage is widely regarded as one of the most distinguished mathematical libraries of its time. Many of the volumes carry De Morgan’s own annotations, offering a unique window into his intellectual practices and historical interests.
Of particular resonance for our symposium was De Morgan’s role as Ada Lovelace’s mathematics tutor. Their extensive correspondence—housed at the Bodeleian Libraries in Oxford, but also available online at the Clay Mathematics Institute—reveals a rich exchange of mathematical ideas, philosophical reflections, and personal insights. The De Morgan Library thus provides not only a historical resource but also an evocative intellectual backdrop for the themes explored in our meeting.
Invited talk: From the ‘woman’ question in mathematical sciences to the ‘mathematical’ matter for feminism
Anna Chronaki, Professor of Mathematics Education at the University of Thessaly, Greece, and Malmö University, Sweden, delivered a deeply thoughtful and theoretically expansive invited talk. She challenged us to shift perspective—not simply to view mathematics as a discipline that has historically excluded women, but to consider how mathematical thinking itself might be reimagined as part of feminist critique and possibility. [follow the link for more details]
The gendered subject of higher education mathematics
What does it mean to “do mathematics” as a gendered subject in the university? In her richly layered presentation Bruna Letícia Nunes Viana , PhD candidate at Stockholm Universityinvited us to rethink the gendered performances that unfold in higher education mathematics—not simply as byproducts of exclusion, but as deeply embedded material-discursive processes that shape how students inhabit their academic and bodily identities. [follow the link for more details and the slides presentation]
Ideological Obstacles on Women’s paths to mathematics
Drawing on decades of research in the philosophy of mathematics education, Paul Ernest, Professor Emeritus at Exeter University, UK, offered a clear and compelling account of the deep-rooted myths and cultural ideologies that continue to obstruct girls’ and women’s access to mathematics—not only in formal education, but in their imagined futures as mathematical thinkers and professionals. [follow the link for more details and the slides presentation]
Pasxalina Chatzi Bei, a PhD candidate at Democritus University in Greece, opened a crucial space in the symposium by foregrounding the lived experiences of women scientists from Greece’s Muslim minority in Thrace—a community often marginalized in both national narratives and mainstream feminist and educational research. [follow this link for more details and the slides presentation]
From “Women” to Structures of Power: Studying Militarism in Mathematics
What does it mean to reimagine mathematics not only as a more inclusive field, but as one actively aligned with liberation? In a bold and urgent presentation, Abigail Taylor-Roth, PhD candidate at the University of Chicago, USA, challenged us to think beyond the familiar frames of gender equity in mathematics and to confront the larger political forces—capitalism, militarism, and hegemonic masculinity—that structure the field itself [follow this link for more details]
This round table brings together reflections and questions that emerged in the wake of the Numbers and Narratives symposium. Convened post-festum it draws on contributions from symposium participants and as well as members of the project's International Advisory Board—most notably Penny-Jane Burke, UNESCO Chair in Equity, Social Justice and HE, University of Newcastle, Australia, Anna Chronaki, Professor of Mathematics Education at the University of Thessaly, Greece, and Malmö University, Sweden and Carrie Paechter, Professor Emerita at Nottingham Trent University, UK. Rather than offering a final word, this round table gathers fragments of an ongoing conversation—provisional, polyphonic, and open to further reverberation. [follow this ling for more details]
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