“Said the autistic endorsed autistic informed academic”: Neurodiversity, Academia and Activism

The neurodiversity movement can be said to have developed as a form of activism directly opposed to the way academics and clinicians had defined particular groups of people purely in terms of pathological deviations from an idealised notion of normalcy. Such a positionality and resultant ethos has been particularly prevalent within the autistic community, and has borrowed heavily from social model (or variations thereof) activist and academic perspectives. In this presentation, I reflect upon my own position as a scholar-activist working within and between the neurodiversity movement and the academy. Traditionally the field of autism studies has been dominated by biological and psychological research, and yet power differentials can impact upon critical sociological work reflected in the formation of niche subcultures. In this presentation, I also comment upon the precarious position of being an ‘endorsed insider’ (and simultaneous opposite) scholar-activist, the potential pitfalls, the expectations and tensions that can come about from others one interacts with, and what can be done to navigate such terrain.