Miss Amber Hughes

Ms Amber Hughes completed her PhD in the School of Education, University of Newcastle, in 2025. Her doctoral thesis focuses on critical and feminist informed critique of mathematics curriculum and policy for Indigenous students in Australia, and the implications for researcher positioning and subjectivities within Indigenous-led spaces of knowledge creation.

Amber currently works as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow within the Teachers and Teaching Research Centre (TTRC) in the school of Education and is keenly devoted to the advancement and engagement of equity across multiple sectors of education.

Prior to her current academic engagement, Amber has substantively developed her research experience, skills, and expertise during an ongoing appointment as a Research and Evaluation Officer within the Centre of Excellence for Equity in Higher Education (CEEHE). The multi-disciplinary research centre, directed by Professor Penny Jane Burke, delivers cutting edge research and evaluative work in equity research in Higher Education and has been internationally recognised through the award of a UNESCO Chair in Equity and Social Justice in Higher Education.

Research expertise

Within her Doctoral thesis, Amber’s specific research focus has been on deconstructing prominent mathematics education policy discourses in Australia and in particular, ways of framing equity and social justice for Indigenous learners therein. Her analysis was crafted through critical policy as discourse methods together with critical researcher reflexivity and draws attention to assumptions embedded within education policy discourse about the kinds of knowledge deemed most powerful within Mathematics curriculum.

The limited ways with which policy discourse envisage change for socially-just aligned outcomes for Indigenous learners are deeply challenged, drawing from the contributions of prominent social justice theorists, post-structural theory and critical mathematics education research frameworks, together with leading Indigenist research and Critical Indigenous Studies discourses.

The body of work, which is encapsulated through a series of four publications within high quality, peer reviewed academic journals, collectively challenge, interrogate, and substantiate a position of Mathematics education policy in Australia and its responsibilities to Indigenous populations. Squarely acknowledged is the role of researchers and educators in contributing to the important work of decolonising knowledge-producing, knowledge-keeping spaces of mathematics education.

Amber has also worked across research in related fields of equity in Higher Education, with and for underrepresented groups such as low-socioeconomic, refugee and asylum seeker, and Indigenous students. She has also contributed substantively to development and implementation of evaluative research, and research on projects jointly offered with community partners.

These include:

• the Department of Communities and Justice,
• the Family Action Centre
• The Paul Ramsay Foundation

As part of the Teachers and Teaching Research Centre (TTRC), her current research contributions are situated in the Thriving Schools project, a joint initiative funded by the Paul Ramsay Foundation (PRF) and the NSW Department of Education and led by Dr Drew Miller.  Her work in coordinating the analysis of longitudinal qualitative data across 25 schools is a central component of the mixed methods design and contributes to development of understandings about school improvement in disadvantaged school contexts.

Amber’s PhD supervision team consists of

• Professor Chris Matthews, Associate Dean (Indigenous leadership and engagement), Faculty of Science, University of Technology, Sydney; Chair of ATSIMA (Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Mathematics Alliance)
• Dr Maura Sellars, Honorary Lecturer, School of Education, University of Newcastle
• Professor Scott Imig, Acting Deputy Head of School Research Training, School of Education, University of Newcastle.

Amber currently works on collaborative projects to develop scholarly and pedagogical materials for Indigenous mathematics across national and international settings, inclusive of work with Canadian First Nations mathematician and scholar, Associate Professor Edward Doolittle, and is an ongoing member of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Mathematics Alliance (ATSIMA), Chaired by Professor Chris Matthews.

Research leadership

· Project Manager, 44th Annual MERGA Conference, 2023, with (Chair) Professor Elena Prieto Rodriguez (School of Education, University of Newcastle).

· Evaluative research project lead (2022-2023): Triennial Review of the Ma and Morley Scholarship Program; Centre of Excellence for Equity in Higher Education (CEEHE)

· Evaluative research project lead (2024): Evaluation of the Reclaiming My Place program for the Department of Communities and Justice (DCJ); Centre of Excellence for Equity in Higher Education (CEEHE) in collaboration with the Family Action Centre.

Among the highlights of her developing academic career have been:

• Publication in highly ranked academic journals, including Educational Philosophy and Theory, Discourse: Studies in the cultural politics of education, Journal of Inclusive Education, and an invited contribution to a special edition of Education Sciences
• Publication of a co-authored book chapter in an international edition of Decolonizing Western-Indigenous Dialogues: Interwoven Epistemologies for Multiple Modernities, edited by Gregory Cajete, Kefilwe Johanna Ditlhake, Maria do Carmo dos Santos Gonçalves, Karsten Kiewitt, & Ronald Lutz
• Conference presentations at the biannual ATSIMA (Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Mathematics Alliance) conference, in 2016, 2020, and 2023
• Invitation to attend a Critical Indigenous Studies reading group held at the Queensland University of Technology (QUT) with Professor Aileen Moreton-Robinson
• Invitation to attend and participate in the internationally renowned Math Bundle 25 project, hosted by the Banff International Research Station for Mathematical Innovation and Discovery (BIRS) and held in Banff, Alberta Canada.

Research awards

During her candidature, Amber has been the recipient of two College awards for Best HDR Publication prize, in 2021 and 2023 respectively. Her published work has been accepted within high-ranking education research journals such as the International Journal of Inclusive Education; Education Sciences; Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education; and Educational Philosophy and Theory.

Amber has been twice selected as a University finalist in the Three Minute Thesis competition (3MT), representing the School of Education and College of Human and Social Futures at the University of Newcastle finals.

Conference presentations

‘Disconnection to Connection: My story of coming to know with and through Indigenous ways of knowing’, in 2023 Biannual ATSIMA (Aboriginal and Torres Strait

Islander Mathematics Alliance) ‘Nhe Waŋana’ ‘Nhe Djämamirriyaŋa’; ‘Speak it, you create it’ conference; on Yolngu country, Yirrkala, North-East Arnhem Land, NT.

2020/2021 ATSIMA (Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Mathematics Alliance) online conference webinar series, ‘Nhe Waŋana’ ‘Nhe Djämamirriyaŋa’; ‘Speak it, you create it’.

2016 ATSIMA (Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Mathematics Alliance) ‘Value us, value our education’ conference held on Dharawal and Yuin Country, Wollongong, NSW.

Keywords

· Evaluative research in Higher Education

· Education policy and curriculum studies

· Mathematics education research

· Mathematics education policy

· Critical mathematics education research

· Indigenous mathematics education

· Critical Indigenous studies

· Mathematics pedagogies

· Mathematics curriculum

· Policy as discourse analysis

· Critical theory

· Feminist theory

· Post-structural theory

· Social justice

· Equity