Women in Mathematics

This talk focused on how gender is understood, enacted and embodied in STEM careers and will outline some of the opportunities, hurdles and strategies that can help women to succeed in STEM careers. I will start with de-bunking some of the myths and stereotypes about women in STEM and go beyond the headline statistics to look at where women are and what they are doing in different STEM sectors and locations. Drawing on my research with women STEM professionals over a number of years, I will focus on two areas. Firstly career entry - how do women get into STEM careers, what are the difficulties and possibilities for new graduates or indeed those changing careers? What are the growth areas (such as AI, Data Science, Cybersecurity), and what jobs will there be in future for mathematically skilled women? Secondly I will look at career strategies including the impact of career breaks and career change, reflecting how women’s careers are often portrayed as ‘frayed’ and deviant from the perspective of a normative STEM career trajectory.

Biography – Dr Clem Herman

Dr Clem Herman is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Computing and Communications at the UK Open University, and Director of eSTEeM, the Open University’s Centre for STEM Pedagogy. Throughout her career Clem has led a range of projects to support the participation and progression of women in STEM, and her research on the impact of career breaks and women returners to STEM has been widely published. Clem was an invited expert on the European Commission WiST 2 (Women in Science and Technology) project conducting research into the impact of career breaks on women in engineering and technology companies in Europe, and was an expert witness in 2013 to the House of Commons Select Committee on Women in STEM. Her most recent ESRC funded research project, has been a comparative study of Gender, Skilled Migration and IT in India and the UK. Clem is the Open University’s Athena SWAN Lead and chair of the Gender Equality Steering Group. She is also the founder and Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Gender Science and Technology.

See full report for Seminar 6

Speaker: Professor Maria Tamboukou
Numbers & Narratives: Becoming a Woman Mathematician

This talk revolves around a research project of writing a feminist genealogy of women in mathematics, looking into the socio-historical conditions of their exclusion, but also tracing processes of going against the grain and becoming a woman mathematician in the margins of the field. This is an interdisciplinary project that combines narrative analysis of significant women mathematicians 'ego' documents, including autobiographies, diaries and letters with annotated bibliographies and reviews of their mathematical papers, as well as evaluations of their contribution to the fields of science and mathematics.

Maria Tamboukou is Professor of Feminist Studies at  the University of East London and Leverhulme Research Fellow in 2018-19. She has held visiting research positions in a number of institutions and is currently Affiliated Professor in Gender Studies at Linnaeus University, Sweden and Adjunct Professor at the Institute for Educational Research at Griffith, Australia.

See full report on Seminar 5

Four LSE Graduates spoke about their careers and offered advice to current staff and students.

Anastasia Kouvela is a Principal in Operation Performance Transformation at A.T. Kearney, a global management consulting firm. She holds a PhD and MSc in Operations Research from LSE.

Claire Cheriyan joined Transport for London on a Transport Planning & Modelling graduate scheme, after completing an undergraduate degree in Mathematics & Economics at LSE.

Snežana Pejić obtained a PhD in Mathematics from LSE, supported by the Radiocommunications Agency. Snežana is now a Senior Quantitative Researcher at Essentia Analytics in London, a company specialising on behavioural data analytics for the investment sector.

Deepa Ramchandani works for Capita Plc as Head of Financial Modelling. Deepa has an undergraduate degree in Mathematics & Economics from LSE as well as a Masters in Operational Research. 

See full report on Seminar 4

Dr Hunsicker is London Mathematical Society Women in Mathematics Chair and senior lecturer in mathematics at Loughborough University. Before this she studied at the University of Chicago, where she received a dissertation fellowship from the American Association of University Women.

She went on to become an associate professor of mathematics at Lawrence University in Wisconsin before moving to the UK. A strong advocate for women in maths, she is an active member of the London Mathematical Society and the Royal Statistical Society.

Professor Julia Black is the School's interim Director and Pro-Director for Research, spoke about the School's recent Athena SWAN application, and about the School's work on issues relating to Equity, Diversity and Inclusion.

Dr Luitgard Veraart is an Associate Professor in the Department of Mathematics, spoke about her career path to date, in particular focussing on her recent Houblon-Norman/George Fellowship at the Bank of England and how she has combined full time work with having a young family.

Professor Barrow-Green  is Professor of History of Mathematics at the Open University. She is on the Council of the London Mathematical Society and has appeared on both television and radio. She is the author of Poincaré and the Three Body Problem and an editor of the Princeton Companion to Mathematics. At the inaugural seminar she spoke about her journey from art gallery assistant to professor via investment banking, and about her research which includes the origins of chaos theory and the mathematics of the First World War.