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.
I currently co-organize, with Ruben Van Belle, The Categorical Late Lunch, Edinburgh's informal category theory seminar.
In 2019–20 I co-organized, with Guy Boyde and Aryan Ghobadi, a meeting for junior researchers called Topics in Category Theory: A Spring School. You can look at the programme of events or the conference photograph.
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 2013 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.
I'm interested in talking with non-mathematicians about what mathematics has to do with understanding—and shaping—the social world, and I'm a fan of pedagogical experiments that aim to make such conversations possible. Some experiments that I've been part of are documented on this site.
e-mail: emily (dot) roff (at) ed (dot) ac (dot) uk