Helen Joyce

Helen Joyce is an Irish journalist and critic of the transgender rights movement. She studied as a mathematician and worked in academia before becoming a journalist. Joyce began working for The Economist as education correspondent for its Britain section in 2005 and has since held several senior positions, including finance editor and international editor. She published her book Trans: When Ideology Meets Reality in 2021. Early life and education She was born in 1968 in Dublin, Ireland, and moved to Bray, County Wicklow at age 8. She's the oldest of nine children of James "Jimmy" and Maureen Joyce, five boys and four girls. Five of her younger siblings — Gus, Ed, Dominick, Isobel, and Cecelia Joyce — have played international cricket for Ireland, while Ed has also played for the England test side. Brothers Johnny and Damian played club cricket. Johnny is an international chess player. Joyce moved to England at age 16 to attend musical theatre college, but dropped out after two years. In 1987, she enrolled at Trinity College, Dublin, where she was elected a Scholar in 1989, and received a BA in mathematics in 1991. She next completed Part III of the Mathematical Tripos with distinction at the University of Cambridge, earning a scholarship from the British Council and a PhD place at University College London. She got a PhD in geometric measure theory at University College London (1995) with the dissertation "Packing measures, packing dimensions, and the existence of sets of positive finite measure" under David Preiss. She then took a postdoctoral position in Cardiff, and spent two years at Finland's University of Jyväskylä on a Marie Curie research fellowship funded by the European Union. Career Returning to University College London to work on a project run by the geology department, Joyce became interested in what she later described as the "business of telling non-mathematicians about maths."