Plenary Speaker Profile (2023-24)
Pamela E. Harris

University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee
Finding and Creating Welcoming Mathematical Spaces

My identities include being a Latinx woman, mother and wife, member of the LGBTQ+ community, educator, advocate, and a mathematician. The journey to adding “mathematician” to my list of identities was not an easy one and it involved finding and creating mathematical spaces and communities in which I could be my authentic self. In this talk, I share how I have found and helped create welcoming mathematical spaces and the lessons I learned along the way that have helped me in comfortably saying “I am a mathematician!”

Dr. Pamela E. Harris is a Mexican-American mathematician and serves as Associate Professor of Mathematics at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. She received her B.S. from Marquette University, and M.S. and Ph.D. in mathematics from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Dr. Pamela E. Harris's research is in algebraic combinatorics and she is the author of over 70 peer-reviewed research articles in internationally recognized journals. She is a Fellow of the American Mathematical Society and of the Association for Women in Mathematics. Dr. Harris is an award winning mathematical educator, receiving the 2022 MAA Deborah and Franklin Tepper Haimo Award for Excellence in Mathematical Education, the 2020 recipient of the MAA Northeast Section Award for Distinguished College or University Teaching, the 2019 MAA Henry L. Alder Award for Distinguished Teaching by a Beginning College or University Mathematics Faculty Member, and the 2019 Council on Undergraduate Research Mathematics and Computer Sciences Division Early Career Faculty Mentor Award. She is the President and co-founder of Lathisms: Latinxs and Hispanics in the Mathematical Sciences and cohosts the podcast Mathematically Uncensored.