尤物视频

Mathematics Education doctoral student in the Faculty of Education

Tell us a little about yourself, including what inspires you to learn and continue in your chosen field

I taught informally for over half a decade before deciding that the questions I was repeatedly faced with required formal inquiry. When I signed up for a Masters, the world was in the grip of uncertainty due to the pandemic, and I was doubly uncertain at leaving a comfortable job in finance to go back to being a student. In my university, however, I found people just like me: those who had taken various meandering paths to arrive at a place where they felt something quite wrong with the way classroom learning happened around them.

My concerns with marginality, language and equity found a somewhat peculiar home in math education. Around the same time, I had started running a speculative fiction magazine, State of Matter, with a few friends, publishing stories that we found just the right bit 鈥榦ff鈥� to unsettle the science fiction, fantasy and horror genres. I wondered if we were not always just the right bit 鈥榦ff鈥� all the time: speculating, caught in other worlds, even when we were chained to a conventional math classroom. This idea led me to explore aesthetics in math education, and then contemporary ideas in the philosophy of education. Suddenly, what started as a singular question, took the shape of a research question.

The question persists, and it might always persist. It sustains me in this chosen field, and changes the way I look at my own teaching and that of others.

Why did you choose to come to SFU?

Much of my own work has intersected with that of faculty at SFU, especially that of my supervisor. After citing them a gazillion times, I thought I would drop them an email and see if they were interested in thinking about their work with me.

How would you describe your research or your program to a family member?

Would it not be wonderful if we could teach math exactly the way we taught poetry? You could walk into a classroom and say, 鈥淲rite some math鈥� like you might say, 鈥淲rite some poetry鈥�, and the child would express their 鈥榠nner movements鈥�. The Indian aesthete and educator, Rabindranath Tagore, teaches us that such a vision is possible because everything we do is not unlike doing poetry. We create a world filled with extraordinary beauty 鈥� that is how we survive in this otherwise dry existence. Education, especially math education, often forgets this simple idea. In my research, I am investigating how we might reintroduce aesthetics so centrally to math classrooms. And what does it really feel like when math feels like poetry? And why does it matter for Canadian classrooms a hundred鈥� a thousand鈥� years from now?

What three (3) keywords would you use to describe your research?

aesthetics, Tagore, speculation

How have your courses, RA-ships, TA-ships, or non-academic school experiences contributed to your academic and/or professional development?

I have taken various courses in the humanities and social sciences in universities over the last ten years, learning from the perspectives each discipline has to offer. I feel that this has allowed me to develop strong foundational knowledge and be prepared for the kind of connections that an interdisciplinary field like Education requires. I was a research associate for over a year before I came down to SFU. The work I did there aligned with contemporary research issues in the education domain, and has helped me shape the contours of my own research, and respond to key voices in this field. I love teaching, and through various teaching and assistantship roles, I have understood something of university learners in BC, and how the curriculum here is structured. I was fortunate to have secured a teaching role in a different university, and meet a student population and university system quite unlike the one at SFU. Communicating my research: whether it be through proposal submissions or the 3MT event, has helped me clearly articulate my own philosophy of education before a wide audience: from specialists to casual acquaintances. It has helped me spell out the clear intellectual, social and political implications of my own work, and relate it to the lives of the different types of people I meet.

Have you been the recipient of any major or donor-funded awards? If so, please tell us which ones and a little about how the awards have impacted your studies and/or research

I received the Dr Hari Sharma Foundation Annual Graduate Scholarship, 2025. The grant has made it easier for me to focus my efforts on research and writing, and has helped me articulate my research interests in alignment with benefits to the South Asian community.

What have been the most valuable lessons you've learned along your graduate student journey (or in becoming a graduate student)?

I have learnt that it is important to be continuously articulating my ideas, trying to refine them when I present them to others. It allows me to see the many different ways people respond to my research, and helps me figure out what direction I want to take my work in. I have also learnt that it is important to rise to opportunities when I can. I have a caring, collaborative cohort that has helped me keep on top of deadlines and applications.

How do you approach networking and building connections in and outside of your academic community?

Part of the 鈥榮kill鈥� of networking comes somewhat naturally to me. I often put myself in situations where I meet people. I love social gatherings, where people talk over coffee. I have met people in art galleries and parks because one of us was reading an interesting book. I think it helps to be genuinely interested in the peculiarities of other lives unfolding before yours. I have developed some of the other 鈥榮kills鈥� in previous liasing and consulting roles: researching people and their work, figuring out ways of collaborating etc.

What are some tips for balancing your academic and personal life?

My academic ideas derive from the way I live my life: the politics I carry with me, the art I appreciate, the time I spend with my friends. It is ok to sometimes sit in your lab and respond to an Instagram meme, just like it is ok to pull out your laptop at karaoke and finish drafting the proposal mid-song.

If you could dedicate your research to anyone (past, present and/or future), who would that be and why?

I would dedicate my research to teachers and writers, people who suffer through immense inefficiencies in their ambitious tasks.

Contact Ayush:ayush_mukherjee@sfu.ca

Additional Links

• My Personal Website