Alumna Priyanka Agarwal joins University of Wisconsin faculty

​Alumna Priyanka Agarwal (Ph.D. ‘19) joined the University of Wisconsin, Madison School of Education Department of Curriculum and Instruction as an assistant professor of mathematics education.  
 
As a doctoral student, Agarwal specialized in Teaching, Learning, Cognition, and Development. For her dissertation, she studied the practice of mathematical problem posing, processes of mathematical questioning, and its implications for bolstering connective and agentic disciplinary engagement among learners. Her research was funded by a University of California President’s Dissertation Fellowship, a College Preparatory Mathematics Dissertation Fellowship, and a California Education Research Association Research Partnership grant. Professor Rossella Santagata and Assistant Professor Tesha Sengupta-Irving (UC Berkeley) served as her co-advisors. 
 
From 2019-20, Agarwal was a postdoctoral scholar at the University of California, Los Angeles Department of Psychology. There, she led a research study investigating how the design of online learning environments shapes college-level students' mathematics learning, engagement, and agency. 

​Agarwal also served as an early career fellow at Mindset Scholars Network for a grant funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. In this role, she synthesized interdisciplinary research on ways to disrupt gendered epistemic injustice in K-12 mathematics.  
 
"I look forward to serving my new community at UW-Madison and to pushing my research to better conceptualize, mobilize, and sustain epistemic curiosity, inquiry, and diversity in mathematics education, and more broadly, in the field of mathematics,” Agarwal said. “I am grateful for my alma maters at UCI and UCLA for inculcating values of rigor, care, and ethics in my research."