Science Café | Anxious about mathematics? Is that even real?
The event will be broadcast live via T4EU YouTube Channel
5 March 2026 | University of Primorska, Slovenia
About
Mathematical achievement and students’ career choices depend not only on the quality of teaching and their cognitive abilities, but also on their attitudes and emotional experiences. One of the most important of these is math anxiety, that is a feeling of tension, worry, or even fear that arises when dealing with numbers or mathematical tasks.
In this talk, we will explore what math anxiety is, how common it is, and how it manifests in everyday situations from the classroom to exams and real-life decision making. Understanding that this form of anxiety exists, and recognizing its impact, is the first step toward helping students cope with it and build more positive, confident relationships with mathematics.
Whether you are a teacher, a student, or simply someone who has ever thought “I’m just not a math person,” this talk aims to shed light on how emotions shape our engagement with mathematics – and what we can do about it.
Our guest at the Science Café will be Krzysztof Cipora, PhD, Assoc. Prof. from Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland. The discussion will also feature students of Psychology and Biopsychology from UP FAMNIT.
The event will be broadcast live by the University of Primorska via T4EU’s YouTube.
About Krzysztof Cipora, PhD
Krzysztof Cipora is an Associate Professor of Psychology at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków and co-leads the Mathematical Cognition and Learning Lab (MCLL). After completing his PhD at Jagiellonian University, he continued his research career as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Tübingen in Germany and as a Senior Lecturer at the Centre for Mathematical Cognition at Loughborough University in the United Kingdom.
His research focuses on:
- basic numerical processing and its relationship to mathematical skills,
- math anxiety and its impact on performance across different groups,
- the influence of language and culture on cognition, as well as issues of open science and research reproducibility.
He is currently leading and collaborating on international projects investigating spatial-numerical cognition in mathematicians and strategies to reduce math anxiety among future teachers.
