kelly marie paton

I did my PhD in Mathematics Education at Simon Fraser University, working with Nathalie Sinclair.

Some mathematics education publications and recent journal submissions:

• [paper] Paton, K. (in press, anticipated November 2026). Towards an ethos of care that embraces mathematics. for the learning of mathematics.
• [book chapter] Paton, K., Fox, A., & Sinclair, N. (under review). Thinking mathematics dis/ability with category theory. P. Tan, C. Yeh, & K. Lewis (Eds.), Reimagining and Transforming Disability in Mathematics Education: Foundations, Resistance, and Futures.
• [paper] Paton, K., & Sinclair, N. (under review). Imagining mathematics dis/ability through the (re)articulations of relational diagramming. Journal for Research in Mathematics Education.
• [thesis] Paton, K. (2026). How thinking with category theory offers new imaginaries for mathematics (and) education [Doctoral dissertation]. Simon Fraser University.
• [paper] Paton, K., Unnithan Kumar, S., & Sinclair, N. (2026). Shaping sustainable futures with relational mathematics. Educational Studies in Mathematics. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10649-026-10485-6
• [book chapter] Paton, K. (2026). A reckoning: Speculative pedagogies and cartographies. In P. Mikulan & N. Sinclair (Eds), Unschooled Futures (ch. 16). Bloomsbury Academic. https://www.bloomsbury.com/ca/unschooled-futures-9781350528604/
• [paper] Paton, K. (2025). Rethinking equality in mathematics education with category theory. The Mathematics Enthusiast 22(3), 343-374. https://doi.org/10.54870/1551-3440.1674
• [book chapter] Paton, K., & Sinclair, N. (2024). An ethico-onto-epistemology for mathematics education. In P. Ernest (Ed.), Ethics and mathematics education: The good, the bad and the ugly (pp. 55-70). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-58683-5_4
• [paper] Günes, C., Paton, K., & Sinclair, N. (2024). The sensory politics of mathematics: Aestheticizing multiplication. Educational Studies in Mathematics 117, 239-261. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10649-024-10326-4

I am a Science Education Specialist in the Mathematics Department at The University of British Columbia / Musqueam Territory. I did my Mathematics graduate work here with Eric Cytrynbaum, in Mathematical Biology.

Some mathematics publications:

• [paper] Cytrynbaum, E.N., & Paton, K. M. (2017). An invariant winding number for the FitzHugh-Nagumo system with applications to cardiac dynamics. SIAM J. Applied Dynamical Systems 16(4), 1893-1922. https://doi.org/10.1137/17M1124206
• [paper] Paton, K. M., Anderson, L., Flottat, P., & Cytrynbaum, E.N. (2015). A model of chloroplast growth regulation in mesophyll cells. Bulletin of Mathematical Biology 9, 1653-1667. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11538-015-0099-z
• [thesis] Paton, K. (2011). A study of wave propagation in the FitzHugh Nagumo system [Master's thesis]. University of British Columbia. https://open.library.ubc.ca/collections/ubctheses/24/items/1.0072522

As an undergraduate student in Engineering Physics and Mathematics at the University of Saskatchewan, and during the year after graduation and before I began my graduate work, I did some research work in a variety of fields: Atmospheric Physics (U of S), Nuclear/Particle Physics (MIT), Condensed Matter Physics (U of S), and Brain-Computer Interfaces (U of T).

Some results from this physics work:

• Falk, T., Paton, K., & Chau, T. (2013). Client-centred music imagery classification based on Hidden Markov Models of baseline prefrontal hemodynamic responses. In R Fazel-Rezai (Ed.), Brain-Computer Interface systems: Recent progress and future prospects (pp. 137-154). IntechOpen. https://doi.org/10.5772/55804
• Simon, F., Azmoun, B., Burns, L., Crary, D., Kearney, K., Keeler, G., Majka, R., Paton, K., Smirnov, N., Surrow, B., & Woody, C. (2006). Development of tracking detectors with industrially produced GEM foils. Nuclear Science Symposium Conference Record, 2 (pp. 660-664). https://doi.org/10.1109/TNS.2007.909912