Dr Rehan Shah and second-year undergraduate student Amelia Stringfellow discussed their experiences of staff-student co-creation on their QMUL scholarship project ‘Beyond the Formula’: Empowering students through co-creation of inclusive mathematics curricula (also undertaken in collaboration with third-year undergraduate Nilah Holmer) as invited panel speakers for the UK History for Diversity in Mathematics Workshop held on 7th and 8th September 2026 at the University of Manchester.

As part of the discussion, they shared insights related to the emergence, implementation, benefits and challenges of undertaking co-creation work on this project, which has been impacting over 800 SEMS students each year from Dr Shah's first and second-year undergraduate mathematics modules EMS412 and EMS506 by raising awareness of inclusivity and diversity in STEM disciplines. As Steering Group Member of the UK History for Diversity in Mathematics Network, Dr Shah was also invited to deliver a 20min short talk to share the details of the implementation, feedback and impact of the project undertaken at QMUL since the past 3 years.

The panel discussion and talks were very received and raised insightful questions and sparked interesting avenues for future exploration on the topic from the 32 attendees, both in-person and online. It was also refreshing to see how Dr Shah and his students' work had inspired colleagues from other universities (Maynooth University in Ireland) to co-design and embed similar EDI resources within their own mathematics curricula. The details and outputs from the work have been featured in two co-authored staff-student journal publications: one of which has already been published in New Directions in the Teaching of Natural Sciences, while the second is due to be published very soon in MSOR Connections.