My name is Vaso Chrysikou and I am a postdoctoral researcher in Mathematics Education. Although my PhD focused on the mathematics education of children with intellectual disabilities, my academic and professional journey has brought me into close contact with many different communities, including Roma children, young prisoners, and others. Through these experiences, I constantly seek ways to make education more inclusive, humane, and meaningful.
I have participated in various research and educational projects that aim to create new common spaces of interaction between students and teachers, across languages, cultures, and lived experiences. Some of these include ACTinPRISON_Interaction matters: Research on development of alternative curricular experiences for young prisoners and prospective teachers, CoSpIRom_Common Spaces for Integration of Roma, and M3EaL_Migration, Multiculturalism, Mathematics Education and Language, among others.
I speak Greek, English, and Italian, and I currently work as a mathematics teacher in a secondary school with multilingual and multicultural classrooms. For me, literacies are not limited to reading and writing, but they are ways of seeing the world, communicating, and coexisting with others. I believe in the power of school as a space of rhizome, a place where one can find grounding, feel safe, express oneself, and build relationships.
Rhizo-Eduscapes is, for me, an opportunity to listen to stories, honor them, and bring them into the light. It is a space where we can co-create common spaces where every child and every person has a place. I am interested in research that does not stay on paper but engages in dialogue with reality and the people who shape it.