Looping mathematics: a micro-ethnography of (un)fitness across craftwork and mathematics

Mégrourèche, Charlotte (2025) Looping mathematics: a micro-ethnography of (un)fitness across craftwork and mathematics. Doctoral thesis (PhD), Manchester Metropolitan University.

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Abstract

This research explores what can happen when mathematics encounters the basketry technique of cycloid looping. It seeks to document and understand the minor mathematical worlds that this kind of work can generate. Centred on a two-year indisciplinary collaboration with basket weaver Geraldine Jones, these pages follow an adventure at the margins of mathematics, where both the objects and subjects of mathematics are inventively complicated. The project introduces the concept of (un)fitness as a tool for engaging with forms of mathematics that are local, fragile, and in tension with dominant regimes of recognition. Through micro-ethnographic analysis, this research traces the mathematics that Geraldine proposes through her looping practice, following the emergence of forms and materials that complicate established norms. For the field of mathematics education, this work contributes to composing a more complex and plural portrait of what mathematics can be by opening possibilities for renewed practices and giving value to forms of mathematical work that have often been disqualified or overlooked.