Dr Vinay Kathotia

Professional biography

My research interests are centred on supporting an equitable, socially just and empowering mathematics education. Particular strands include:

• Mathematics as sense-making and argumentation, grounded in learners’ experiences and inclusive classrooms. Joint work with Kate O’Brien and Yvette Solomon – please also see www.rme.org.uk for related teaching resources and research.
• Making mathematics – the interplay of art, craft, mathematics and technology for a joyful and expressive mathematics. Collaboration with Eva Knoll, Kate O'Brien, Ricardo Nemirovsky and others, and with Vidya Bhawan Society in India, who have worked on Gandhian Basic Education / Nai Talim (since its inception in the 1930s), which uses craft as a pedagogical basis. Some ‘making mathematics’ design principles are outlined in the article Critical Experiences of Expressive Mathematics (joint with Ricardo Nemirovsky, pages 22-25 in the Proceedings of the MATRIX III Conference, 2018, Barcelona).
• Diagrammatic representation – research on the use of diagrams (and animation) in mathematics and in mathematical learning. An example is the short paper, Diagrammatic representations for mathematical problem solving (joint with Elizabeth Kimber, at the Eleventh Congress of the European Society for Research in Mathematics Education, 2019, Utrecht).

I am interested in

• supporting learners in using, crafting and connecting multiple representations for mathematical concepts and processes, and
• supporting inclusive and deliberative learning experiences, in particular for distance/remote learning.

I am Module Team Deputy Chair for ME321, Learning and Doing Geometry, and for ME620, Mathematical Thinking in Schools, and am part of the team developing ME322, Learning and Doing Algebra, which launched in October 2022. 

I support and present Royal Institution mathematics masterclasses, run teacher workshops for the Prince’s Teaching Institute, and am an ambassador for MathsWorldUK. I recently worked with Andrew Griffin, Eva Knoll, Paul Gailiunas and Felicity Wood on an e-book, Sharp Forms, to commemorate and celebrate the life and work of John Sharp, who passed away in 2020. John did much to connect people, art and mathematics, and was co-organiser of Bridges 2006 in London and a subsequent Maths-Art seminar series at the London Knowledge Lab.