Dec 17, 2022When did you know?When did I know? I know what you mean, and yet I want to scream What do you really mean? When did I start playing with bedsheets? To fashion saris, frocks, and dupatta out of it Or, when did I learn that I should lock the door when doing that? Panic and…Transgender1 min readTransgender1 min read
Dec 17, 2022Engineering Reform(Engineering) Reform the new god shall wear skins of old gods trinkets of justice too and drink from the same cup fresh salty tearsReform1 min readReform1 min read
Dec 17, 2022On Niceness(talk given at a panel on the notion of niceness within academic spaces) “My response to racism is anger. I have lived with that anger, ignoring it, feeding upon it, learning to use it before it laid my visions to waste, for most of my life. Once I did it…Equity3 min readEquity3 min read
Nov 13, 2021The case for including pronouns of authors in publicationsThe case for including pronouns of authors in publications This is a slightly edited version of a talk I gave as a panelist at the 2021 Gender Summit (GS20 Latin America) [Plenary 7: Widening access to science knowledge and research publications, As part of the 2021 Gender Summit (GS20 Latin…Nonbinary8 min readNonbinary8 min read
Mar 25, 2021Further thoughts on “Decolonization in Not a Metaphor”In 2017, I wrote a blog post trying to grapple with some of the ideas in the paper: Tuck, E., & Yang, K. W. (2012). Decolonization is not a metaphor. Decolonization: Indigeneity, education & society, 1(1). I wanted to develop my thoughts a little bit more. Tuck and Yang make…Decolonization6 min readDecolonization6 min read
Nov 22, 2020Discourse of ObjectivityDiscourse of objectivity In a recent discussion with some colleagues, I found myself making the argument that knowledge is subjective and the stamp of who does the knowing is imprinted on the knowledge. I struggled to come up with examples in the context of math and physics that were as…Diversity6 min readDiversity6 min read
Oct 28, 2019Remembering HunterThere was pet hair on the floor. I hadn’t been able to vacuum for the past week. As I run the vacuum cleaner, I realize that some of these are Hunter’s hairs. Some of the last remains of his physical body. I didn’t request to get Hunter’s ashes. It didn’t…Dogs9 min readDogs9 min read
Oct 19, 2019On being brown, immigrant, queer, scholar: Part 1When I was growing up, I didn’t really think about being brown. Well, not in the way that I think about it now. Growing up, I was quite aware that I wasn’t fair skinned, which was highly prized within the communities I grew up in. Fair-skin was the pathway to…Identity3 min readIdentity3 min read
Aug 8, 2018How tension arises and disperses during group-work in physicsI have been rather fortunate to be able to work with Erin Ronayne Sohr in the past few years, first in her role as a graduate student and now as a post-doc. Erin joined our project on how students learn quantum mechanics in 2014 or so, and we got to…Science Education3 min readScience Education3 min read
May 28, 2018Reason and emotionIn 2008, Andrew Elby got funded a new grant to study mathematical sensemaking with students in introductory physics classes for engineers and in a couple of their followup courses in engineering. Andy, Eric Kuo, Brian Danielak, Michael Hull and I started working on the project. As part of the project…Physics Education6 min readPhysics Education6 min read
