Emily Roff

I am a PhD student at the University of Edinburgh, where I am a member of the Geometry and Topology group in the Hodge Institute, working with Tom Leinster. My research has to do with numerical and homological invariants of metric spaces that derive from an interpretation of a metric space as a type of enriched category. More generally, I am interested in enriched category theory and its applications within and beyond pure mathematics.

On this page: Events | Writing | Talks | Teaching | Outreach and exchange | Past lives | Contact

Events

This year I am co-organizing, with Ruben Van Belle, The Categorical Late Lunch, Edinburgh's informal category theory seminar.

Last year I co-organized, with Guy Boyde and Aryan Ghobadi, a meeting for junior researchers called Topics in Category Theory: A Spring School. You'll find the programme of events here, and the conference photograph here.

Writing

'The maximum entropy of a metric space' (with Tom Leinster), arXiv:1908.11184, 2019; Quarterly Journal of Mathematics, to appear

Talks

Teaching

As a supervisor for the undergraduate vacation research programme in the School of Mathematics:

Outreach and exchange

Sep 2019 — Performing Arts Forum, Saint-Erme-Outre-et-Ramecourt

Instructor at Mobilis in Mobili (led by Gabriel Catren)—a week-long workshop, addressed to non-scientists, introducing the history that led from the first axiomatic formulation of geometry in Euclid's Elements to Einstein's theory of special and general relativity. Presented a class^† on Euclidean and Cartesian geometry, and a workshop aimed at "discovering" Gaussian curvature and the Theorema Egregium.

Nov 2018, May 2019 — Robert Schumann Hochschule, Düsseldorf

Invited participant at Form and Formalism (led by Julian Rohrhuber and Tzu Chien Tho)—a seminar for students of music informatics and media theory with an interest in abstract algebra and category theory. Led discussions about universal properties, diagrams and limits.

Jun 2018 — Performing Arts Forum, Saint-Erme-Outre-et-Ramecourt

Instructor at Categories for the Hard-Working Non-Mathematician (led by Gabriel Catren)—a week-long, philosophically oriented introduction to the basics of category theory for people without a university background in mathematics. Presented three two-hour lectures: on sets, equivalence relations and groupoids; on categories and functors; and on algebraic methods in topology.

Feb 2018 — Skowhegan Gallery and NYU, New York

Invited participant at the Institute of Physical Sociality—a research group interested in mathematics and physics, ethics, gender and race, organized by Arika and led by Karen Barad, Gabriel Catren, Fred Moten and Fernando Zalamea.

Past lives

Before joining the University of Edinburgh in September 2018 I took the MASt in Pure Mathematics at the University of Cambridge, where I wrote my Part III essay under the supervision of Martin Hyland. Prior to that, I studied for a BSc with the Open University and King's College London.

I haven't always been a maths student. From 2011 through 2016 I worked as a welfare rights adviser with the Child Poverty Action Group, Drumchapel Money Advice Centre and WestGAP, and from 2005 until 2012-ish I (also) worked as a producer of music and arts projects with Arika and Tracer Trails. I have an undergraduate degree from the School of Scottish Studies at the University of Edinburgh.

As my outreach and exchange activities suggest, I'm interested in talking with non-mathematicians about what mathematics has to do with understanding the social world, and I'm a fan of pedagogical experiments that aim to make such conversations possible.

Contact

Email firstname.lastname@ed.ac.uk

This page was last updated on 8 December 2020. ^†Photo by Christian Töpfner.