Heather Mendick PhD MA BA
Heather joined Goldsmiths in 2007 as a part-time lecturer. She teaches mainly on the BA in Education Culture and Society, the MA in Language, Culture and Identity and the PhD programme. She supervises doctoral students in the areas of identity and social justice who are taking a narrative and/or post-structural approach. With Charmian Kenner Heather heads the department’s Research Support Group.
Before returning to academic study, to do first an MA in Gender Studies at Newcastle and then a PhD in Education at Goldsmiths, Heather worked as a mathematics teacher mostly in further education. Her doctorate looked at the much discussed question: Why do girls choose not to study mathematics as much as boys? Her approach drew on sociology, cultural studies, feminist and queer theory and a version of it was published as Masculinities in Mathematics byOpen University Press in 2006. She has also co-edited, with Laura Black and Yvette Solomon, a book on Mathematical Relationships in Education: identities and participation published by Routledge in 2009. Her newest book, Urban Youth and Schooling, is written jointly with Louise Archer and Sumi Hollingworth and will be published by Open University Press in 2010.
Recently Heather’s work has focused on the ways that popular culture, in all its many forms, influences people’s identities. This has included two projects looking at the ways that mathematics and mathematicians are represented in cultural texts and the ways that learners make sense of these representations. She also carried out a project with Katya Williams for the British Academy that explored, among other things, whether CSI really was responsible for increased enrolments in forensic science degrees. Her most recent research, with Marie-Pierre Moreau has looked at the online representations of men and women in science, engineering and technology. She has written about celebrity culture with Kim Allen and Rosalyn George. One of her publications is included in Buffyology, a bibliography of academic material on Buffy Studies. Heather’s research into popular culture enables her to watch TV and youtube and call it work. Her favourite TV shows include the much missed Sopranos, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Deadwood, The Larry Sanders Show, The Wire and Californication; she is already mourning the end of Big Brother and is pleased that E4 finally purchased Veronica Mars.
See Heather on YouTube
See Heather’s page on academia.edu
Research interests
Heather is a member of the editorial board of the journals Gender and Education and Research in Mathematics Education, an executive member of the Gender and Education Association and has recently finished a four year term as newsletter editor of the International Organisation of Women and Mathematics EducationHeather has worked on a number of externally funded research projects on a range of policy and social justice issues (for the Gatsby Technical Education Projects, the Scottish Executive, the Esmeé Fairbairn Foundation and what were then called the DfES, the TTA and the LSDA but whose initials have shifted since). She has also led several research studies:
The representation of women in Science, Engineering and Technology in online media (with Marie-Pierre Moreau, funded by the UK Resource Centre for Women in Science Engineering and Technology)
The impact of the depiction of work in TV drama on young people's career aspirations & choices (with Katya Williams, funded by the British Academy)
Mathematical Relationships: Identities & Participation (with Laura Black, Margaret Brown, Melissa Rodd and Yvette Solomon, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council)
Mathematical Images and Identities: Education, Entertainment, Social Justice (with Debbie Epstein and Marie-Pierre Moreau, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council)
Mathematical Images and Gender Identities (with Sumi Hollingworth and Marie-Pierre Moreau, funded by the UK Resource Centre for Women in Science Engineering and Technology)
In addition to the doctoral students Heather supervises at Goldsmiths – Patricia Alexander, Anna Carlile, Deborah Sawyer and Marlene Ellis – she also supervises:
Selected publications
Books
Archer, L., Hollingworth, S. and Mendick, H. (2010) Urban Youth and Education. Maidenhead: Open University Press
Black, L., Mendick, H. and Solomon, Y. (eds) (2009) Mathematical Relationships in Education: identities and participation. New York: Routledge
Mendick, H. (2006) Masculinities in Mathematics, Buckingham: Open University Press
Key Articles
Moreau, M.-P., Mendick, H. and Epstein, D. (2010) Constructions of mathematicians in popular culture and learners’ narratives: a study or mathematical and non-mathematical subjectivities. Cambridge Journal of Education, 40(1), 25-38
Epstein, D., Mendick, H. and Moreau, M.-P. (2010). Imagining the mathematician: young people talking about popular representations of maths. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 31(1), 45-60
Smart, S., Hutchings, M., Maylor, U., Mendick, H. and Menter, I. (2009). Processes of middle-class reproduction in a graduate employment scheme, Journal of Education and Work, 22(1), 35-53.
Mendick, H. (2008) Subtracting difference: troubling transitions from GCSE to AS-level mathematics, British Educational Research Journal, 34(6), 711-732.
Mendick, H. (2005) A Beautiful Myth? The gendering of being/doing "good at maths", in Gender and Education, 17(2): 89-105.
Mendick, H. (2005) Mathematical stories: why do more boys than girls choose to study mathematics at AS-level in England? , in British Journal of Sociology of Education, 26(2): 225-241.
Mendick, H. (2005) Only connect: troubling oppositions in gender and mathematics , in International Journal of Inclusive Education, 9(2):161-180 (This was reprinted in the online Philosophy of Mathematics Education Journal.) Read this online
Keynote addresses
Mendick, H. (2009) You do the math: making sense of gender and achievement. Keynote address to the Annual Norfolk Primary Mathematics Conference, 30th June, Norfolk.
Mendick, H. (2007) ‘I could always just play’: gender and mathematical ability. Keynote address to the Promoting Equality in Mathematics Achievement Conference, 25-26 January, Barcelona.
Mendick, H. (2007) Undoing mathematics? Troubling fantasies of gender and mathematics. Keynote address to Mathematics, Science and Technology in the Body of Education Conference, 18-19 December, Volos.