Together with Tamara Großmann and Julia Kroos, I co-founded Her Maths Story in January 2021. Currently, we are a team of five including Anna Breger, Lakshmi Chandrasekaran, Anna Konstorum, Julia Kroos and myself. We’re running a website together with a stories and a blog section and we are active on various social media channels:
Like everything, Her Maths Story started out as an idea. I chatted with some fellow women mathematician friends and we realised, even though we spread out across Europe to do our PhDs in different places after studying maths in Münster, we all made similar experiences as women in maths. We all had to overcome imposter syndrome, everyday sexism and a highly competitive environment but we all found similar strategies helpful to cope with those – for example, role models. Mentors. People who accompanied us along the way, encouraged us, shared their own struggles.
And that is what Her Maths Story is about. We want to share stories of women mathematicians in all walks of life and thereby showcase the variety of careers, non-linear paths and individual decision-making processes coming along. Thus, we hope to inspire, encourage and empower other women to pursue careers in mathematics and feel a bit less alone.