Jessica Benally

I am a sixth year doctoral student in the Learning Sciences & Human Development program. My interest is in designing materials to create a dialogic negotiation between Diné/Navajo and Western epistemology in mathematics curriculum. Looking toward rematriating mathematics education by using ethnomathematics to restructurate learning practices to include Indigenous relationality, including land-based spatial perspectives through the Diné language. My current project leverages the egocentric and allocentric perspectives in geometry education with angles. Participants collaborate between their perspectives to connect stars of the Náhookos Bika’/Ursa Major constellation in a constructed planetarium. I am from Tohatchi, New Mexico on the Navajo Reservation, and I graduated with a B.S. in Applied Mathematics from the University of New Mexico.

https://indigenousmathematicians.org/jessica-benally/

Presentations and Publications:

Lagos, J., Benally, J., & Kularajan1, S. (2025, Jan 22–26). Networking ethnomathematics, embodied cognition-new materialism, and mathematical modeling to reimagine professional development. In Le Roux, K., Coles, A., Solares-Rojas, A., Bose, A., Vistro-Yu, C. et al. (Eds.). (2025). Proceedings of the 27th ICMI Study Conference (Mathematics Education and the Socio-Ecological). (pp. 487-494). MATHTED and ICMI. https://icmistudy27.sciencesconf.org/resource/page/id/15.

Benally, J. (2025, Jan 8-9). Grounding Euclid in Diné territory: tensions and dexterities of culture, language, and cognition in mathematics [Session presentation]. CRM-PIMS-AARMS, Special Session on Indigenous Voices in Mathematics, 2025 Joint Mathematics Meeting Conference, Seattle, WA.

Benally, J. (2024, June 17–20). Co-constructing N´ahookos Bi’ka’ constellation with STARR [Doctoral Consortium]. In J. P. Hourcade & H. M. Skovbjerg (Eds.), ”Inclusive Happiness” – Proceedings of the 23rd Annual ACM Interaction Design and Children Conference, Delft, Netherlands. Association for Computing Machinery, ACM, New York, NY, USA. https://doi.org/10.1145/3628516.3659861

Benally, J. (2024, June 17–20). Co-constructing N´ahookos Bi’ka’ constellation with STARR [Demo]. In E. M. Bonsignore & M. Horton (Eds.), ”Inclusive Happiness” – Proceedings of the 23rd Annual ACM Interaction Design and Children Conference, Delft, Netherlands. Association for Computing Machinery, ACM, New York, NY, USA. https://doi.org/10.1145/3628516.3661161

Benally, J. (2024, April). Angling the stars: A Geometry Design Reconciling Indigenous and Colonial Perceptions. In D. Abrahamson (Chair) & S. Gerofsky (Discussant), In-sight out: Challenges and opportunities in learning mathematics through negotiating egocentric and allocentric perspectives. Symposium presented for the SIG Research in Mathematics Education at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, Philadelphia, April 11–14.

Benally, J., Palatnik, A., Ryokai, K., & Abrahamson, D. (2022). Learning through negotiating conceptually generative perspectival complementarities: The case of geometry. For the Learning of Mathematics, 42(3), 34–41.

Benally, J. (2022, Mar). Braiding what matters into Mathematics Education. Presented at the Confluence roundtable at the Seeding Relations: Beyond Settler Colonial Racialized Ecologies, Harvard University Mahindra Humanities Center Interdisciplinary Graduate Student Conference.

Benally, J. (2020, Mar). Dynamic embodied angles in a simulated restorative planetarium. Poster accepted for presentation at the annual Research Day, Graduate School of Education, University of California, Berkeley.