Lara Alcock

Alcock earned bachelor's and master's degrees in mathematics at the University of Warwick, and in 2001 completed a PhD in mathematics education at Warwick.^[2][3] Her PhD research on Categories, definitions and mathematics: Student reasoning about objects in analysis, was supervised by Adrian Simpson.^[6]

After working as an assistant professor at Rutgers University in New Jersey, she returned to the UK as a teaching fellow at Essex University. She moved to Loughborough in 2007.^{[2][7][8][9][3]}

Alcock's publications^[1] include:

• Ideas from Mathematics Education: An Introduction for Mathematicians (with Adrian Simpson, Higher Education Academy, 2009)
• How to Study for a Mathematics Degree / How to Study as a Mathematics Major (UK/US; Oxford University Press, 2013); Wie man erfolgreich Mathematik studiert (translated into German by Bernhard Gerl, Springer Spektrum, 2017)^{[10][11][12][13]}
• How to Think about Analysis (Oxford University Press, 2014)^[14]
• Mathematics Rebooted: A Fresh Approach to Understanding (Oxford University Press, 2017)^[7]
• How to Think About Abstract Algebra (Oxford University Press, 2021)^[15]

Alcock is the 2012 winner of the Annie and John Selden Prize for research in undergraduate mathematics education, given by the Mathematical Association of America.^[3] She was named a National Teaching Fellow by the Higher Education Academy in 2015.^[5]

Alcock was the inaugural winner of the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications John Blake University Teaching Medal in 2021. ^[4]