Outreach section
Invited speakers:
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Programme (all talks are in Abacws/4.35):
Mon 30th March, 2026
| 3:00pm – 4:00pm | Chris Budd (Bath) |
| “Be intelligent, not artificial” (abstract) | |
| 4:00pm – 4:30pm | Coffee break |
| 4:30pm – 5:15pm | Caroline Ainslie (Bubbly Maths) |
| 5:15pm – 6:00pm | Naomi Wray (Cardiff) |
| “Being positive deaf-inite in maths outreach” (abstract) |
Tue 31st March, 2026
| 3:00pm – 4:00pm | Kevin Houston (Leeds) |
| “How to tell the public about your research without losing them” (abstract) | |
| 4:00pm – 4:30pm | Coffee break |
| 4:30pm – 5:15pm | Emma Coutts (Heriot-Watt) |
| “Widening Access or Outreach? Difference pieces of the same puzzle” (abstract) |
Wed 1st April, 2026
| 3:00pm – 4:00pm | Francis Hunt (Swansea / Maths Support Programme Wales) |
| “Meaningful maths: realistic or hilarious?” (abstract) | |
| 4:00pm – 4:30pm | Coffee break |
| 4:30pm – 5:15pm | Ben Sparks (Sparks Maths) |
| “Making Maths Move (in various ways)” (abstract) |
Outreach section organisers:
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Abstracts:
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Chris Budd (Bath): Be intelligent, not artificial
In the talk I'll discuss effective ways of communicating the pros, and cons of AI, in particular to policy makers, and to young people. Showing (of course) that maths is the key to both understanding and developing AI systems.
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Emma Coutts (Heriot-Watt): Widening Access or Outreach? Difference pieces of the same puzzle
Widening access, outreach, and public engagement are often treated as distinct institutional responsibilities, yet they represent overlapping pieces of the same broader puzzle: bringing current research and education to wider audiences as well as inspiring future learners into Higher Education.
Despite their shared purpose, these terms lack universally accepted definitions, and the picture is further complicated by the differing structures, priorities, and goals that individual institutions have developed around them.
This talk explores the interplay of these three areas; what they mean, why they matter, how they relate to one another and how we approach and manage this work at Heriot-Watt University. I will highlight the excellent contributions of our outreach team, in particular, the mathematics outreach activities we have developed and delivered over the past few years and an exciting new project to open a new access pathway to mathematics degrees at Heriot-Watt.
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Kevin Houston (Leeds): How to tell the public about your research without losing them
Explaining your research to other specialists is hard enough. Explaining it to the general public -- people who may not share your enthusiasm for notation, definitions, and carefully stated lemmas -- can be even more challenging. Yet public engagement is an important part of academic life, and mathematicians now have many opportunities to share their work beyond the university.
In this talk I’ll discuss practical ways to tell the public about your research without losing them somewhere around the first equation. We’ll look at how to find the hook in your work, how to replace technical detail with intuition and examples, and how to turn abstract mathematics into something people can actually picture.
Ideally, by the end you’ll have a few techniques for explaining your research to non-mathematicians -- whether in a public lecture, an article, or when someone innocently asks what you do.
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Francis Hunt (Swansea / Maths Support Programme Wales): Meaningful maths: realistic or hilarious?”
The Maths Support Programme in Wales (formerly the Further Maths Support Programme Wales) aims to transform and enrich the mathematical experience of school students. This includes enthusiastic students, but also students who find maths miserable and meaningless; this talk focuses on this second group. Governments often justify maths at school with an eye to the future adult workforce, but these are not credible arguments or motivations for many students. This talk will consider more plausible motivations. It will look at codes, games, magic tricks, origami and puzzles, explore how they overlap with maths, and where they differ. It will also consider enrichment in wider context of the context of the Curriculum for Wales, and Maths Week Wales (21st – 29th November 2026). Attendees will leave this talk with some enrichment activities to try, and some thoughts on how to try to re-engage the disengaged.
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Ben Sparks (Sparks Maths): Making Maths Move (in various ways)”
Ben works in various maths communication projects, including the Maths Inspiration live shows, Numberphile videos on YouTube, and the University of Bath Maths Communication course, alongside his work with MEI's course on Maths into AI for teachers and sixth formers.
He'll share some updates on these projects, how they overlap with each other and academic mathematics, and some thoughts on the common ground between them all - including the ever useful advice to 'Make it Move' (and some ways to achieve this).
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Naomi Wray (Cardiff): Being positive deaf-inite in maths outreach
Hearing loss affects approximately 1 in 3 adults, with half of the population aged over 50 experiencing decrease in hearing ability. There are more than 50,000 deaf or hard of hearing young people in the UK, and 56% of them go to university - but only 9% go to the top universities (Russell Group). As a deaf student in Cardiff, part of this 9%, I ask: What are further education institutions doing to provide accessible content for deaf and hard of hearing students or staff? In this talk, I will draw on personal experience of learning through sign language and discuss various factors of science in higher education which are barriers for deaf people in their further education. I hope to enlighten the unseen difficulties in audiences, demonstrate what researchers are doing to help overcome these barriers, and encourage constructive habits to promote deaf accessibility throughout academia.
Contact:
All further questions and inquiries can be addressed to Yasemin Sengul Tezel at:
- SengulTezelY at cardiff dot ac dot uk