During my own personal journey to find belonging, it has been instrumental to be involved in, to create, and to nurture communities of practice and transformation. The mathematical foundations of networked ecosystems, with its relational and complex adaptive systems perspective, has informed this STEM community building work. However, for many years, undertaking social justice meant personal activism, teaching, service, and education research and excluded “mathematics research.” But mathematical and computational research for social justice is now gaining exciting momentum. Our greatest challenge and our greatest opportunity is that we are both shaping the future of mathematics, computation, STEM and STEM education as well as redefining the community that should shape it. Creating mathematical research communities for social justice offers an exciting moment to build an inclusive and mutually supportive community focused on nurturing belonging, collaboration, interdisciplinarity, openness, and innovative mathematics.
