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I\u00a0 didn\u2019t expect to find myself crying.<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t tend to study emotional topics. I\u2019ve studied\u00a0\u2018troubles talk\u2019<\/a>,\u00a0administrative systems<\/a>\u00a0and post PhD\u00a0employability<\/a>, but this research on neurodiversity and the PhD experience is different. This is definitely the first time I\u2019ve been moved to tears by a piece of academic writing. I guess it\u2019s because this research feels, well \u2013 personal.<\/p>\n I am, I guess, \u2018neurotypical\u2019 \u2013 if there is such a thing (as\u00a0Tony Armstrong<\/a>\u00a0put it, there is no \u2018brain \u2018pickled in a jar\u2019 in a museum somewhere that defines \u2018normal\u2019). The more I read about neurodiversity however, the more I question myself. I have some ADHD traits, such as the ability to slip into a state of\u00a0hyperfocus\u00a0<\/a>and some autism traits, like\u00a0associational thinking<\/a>\u00a0and a strong need for routine. I don\u2019t, however, fit the diagnostic criteria for either type of neurodiversity and I don\u2019t experience my \u2018quirks\u2019 as disabilities. I am, for example, relatively comfortable with ambiguity in social situations and I don\u2019t\u00a0struggle to prioritise a \u2018to do\u2019 list<\/a>\u00a0or experience\u00a0\u2018time blindness\u2019<\/a>.<\/p>\n But many of my family members do identify as neurodiverse; both my genetic family and the one I married into. My family only started getting formal diagnoses in the last 15 years or so, after our children entered school. Our children all found school hard in various ways. To their credit, teachers didn\u2019t let them flounder; education has improved drastically since the 70s and 80s. Neurodiversity is identified and children are taught study and advocacy skills. By contrast, most adults in my family, including myself, struggled at school, either academically or socially, but we just thought we were\u2026 weird? Nerdy? Different?<\/p>\n Now we have names for this difference: Autism, ADHD, OCD, Dyslexia, Tourettes.<\/p>\n Everyday I witness the incredible strengths and talents of my neurodiverse family. I\u2019ve walked alongside them in various struggles with school and life. I\u2019ve celebrated success, helped, where I can\u2026 And I\u2019ve sometimes been less than helpful and empathetic. My neurotypical-ish self can find my neurodiverse family members\u2019 behaviour mystifying, annoying and exasperating. Conversely, my neurotypical expectations and demands have been annoying, irritating and unreasonable for them.<\/p>\n When I get frustrated or upset I try to remind myself: we\u2019re all on a journey of discovery here. We all need to find reserves of love, gentleness and patience with each other. Most of the time I think we do ok.<\/p>\n Over the last decade or so, as my own awareness of neurodiversity has grown, I can\u2019t help but notice how many academics, including PhD students, are similar to members of my family. I think it\u2019s one of the reasons I find academia a comfortable professional world (the people are literally \u2018familiar\u2019).<\/p>\n So many people in academia have the \u2018special interests\u2019 and intense focus that is the signature of Austism. Others have the restless itch of curiosity and creativity so characteristic of ADHD. Along with the talents there are struggles. People on the Austism spectrum can be mystified by the intensely social nature of academia at a PhD level, where you are expected to act more like a staff member than a student (including getting involved in departmental dramas and politics). People with ADHD can find the scope of their PhD gets wildly out of control as they fall down many rabbit holes opened up by their curiosity.<\/p>\n Neurodiverse brains can also struggle with exerting the levels of concentration required for long stints of reading or analysis, but for different reasons. Some people have sensory issues around light and sound, others just have trouble sitting still.<\/p>\n Of course, because no two brains are the same and you can, like one of my nephews, be Autistic and have ADHD at the same time. You can also, like this same nephew, have amazing talents, that flourish under the right conditions. Or you can, like others in my family, be averagely talented (it\u2019s abelist to demand that neurodiversity be accompanied by \u2018giftedness\u2019 some other domain). Some people, like myself, have some neurodiverse traits, but don\u2019t meet the diagnostic criteria for a specific condition. No two brains alike, right? So the experience of neurodiversity is huge and varied, and intersects with other identities, like gender, class and ethnicity.<\/p>\n In other words, it\u2019s complicated.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve formed a (probably unprovable) theory that there is more neurodiversity in our universities than in almost any other profession except, perhaps IT. But at the same time neurodiversity is mostly hidden, invisible, denied and ignored in our discussions about academia and academics. There is a paucity of research on the topic of neurodiversity in working academics. What scholarship does exist,\u00a0such as this paper on making autistic spaces in academia<\/a>, radically questions academic \u2018norms\u2019 and I am so here for it. But while I celebrate those scholars doing the work, I suspect many individuals feel fear, uncertainty and doubt about disclosing their neurodiversity.<\/p>\n To get by in life, neurodiverse people often have to \u2018mask\u2019: that means pretending to be neurotypical. Masking requires constant monitoring of the self and others during each and every social interaction, which is, frankly, exhausting. Masking adds an extra burden to functioning in an already busy, competitive academic environment, but people do it because they are too afraid to disclose their neurodiversity. Who wants the label of \u2018disabled\u2019? Especially if you just experience your neurodiversity as a part of who you are, not a \u2018condition\u2019 and needs to be \u2018fixed\u2019.<\/p>\n The stigma is real.<\/p>\n Since I started talking about neurodiversity on podcasts, social media and here on the blog, many people have disclosed their neurodiversity to me. And believe me, there are neurodiverse people in all areas of academia: in executive university management, high level administrators, well known scholars, as well as lecturers, postdocs and PhD students. Clearly being neurodiverse does not stop you from succeeding in academia, but it can make everyday academic life much harder.<\/p>\n Neurodiverse academics are what used to be called \u2018high functioning\u2019. Many have never sought a diagnosis because, well \u2013 they don\u2019t feel \u2018disabled\u2019 until they face specific barriers. They may even, as\u00a0Helen Kara and Aimee Grant argue<\/a>, experience their neurodiversity as an academic advantage. The term \u2018high functioning\u2019 has fallen out of use with the growing recognition that it is often the world, not the person, that is the source of the disability. When the world is structured for neurodiverse people to succeed, they can and do. When the structure is not set up well, or it changes suddenly, neurodiverse people can struggle.<\/p>\n People with ADHD, for instance, sometimes struggle at PhD level, despite succeeding well enough in course work to get there. Compared to coursework study, the flexible structure of the PhD, both in terms of time and task, must be attractive for people who enjoy following where their curiosity leads and sometimes struggle to turn up places on time. But perhaps the structures of coursework study, which seemed so restrictive and painful, were actually quietly helping that neurodiverse brain succeed.<\/p>\n The \u2018episodic\u2019 nature of coursework, which rewards short bursts of intense effort, could be more ADHD friendly than the slow work of a PhD which involves a lot of what gamers would call \u2018grinding\u2019. Likewise, the clearly mapped pathways to learning and rubrics for achievement in coursework can help people on the autism spectrum manage anxiety and stress. Neurodiverse people often need and want clear guidance and instructions, but many supervisors are reluctant to provide them, under the mistaken assumption that this will hinder the development of scholarly independence and creativity.<\/p>\n How very neurotypical.<\/p>\n I have a second (totally unprovable) theory that Academia was originally built to accomodate neurodiverse populations, but has become less hospitable over time.<\/p>\n Think about the monastic style university colleges in the Oxbridge tradition. I\u2019m inside\u00a0Wolfson College<\/a>\u00a0at Cambridge as I write this, sitting at a comfortable desk looking out over a sunny garden. It\u2019s secluded, quiet, solitary \u2013 but it doesn\u2019t have to be. A college, in the Oxbridge sense, is like a giant academic share house, set up to support all aspects of academic life. I could sleep here if I wanted. A few steps away from my charming office is a dining hall, where I can be fed and find a ready made group of nerdy friends to hang out with.<\/p>\n The ritualised nature of the college rules here keep tripping me up \u2013 but at least they are explicit. They will tell you what dinners are formal, which are not, when to eat, where to put your dishes, and what kind of interaction is permitted in the dining hall, vs the club house and the common room. The college\u00a0porters<\/a>, the literal gate keepers at Cambridge, can probably solve any logistical problem, as well as answer questions, provide me with keys, find my lost stuff and tell me to stop walking on the grass.<\/p>\n And being a member of a scholarly community inside universities like Cambridge and Oxford used to be \u2013 and in some ways still is \u2013 for life. I chatted to one senior college academic who looked after the \u2018Bachelor Fellows\u2019; academics who had lived their whole life in college. These elderly academics were being cared for in a form of \u2018assisted living\u2019 within the college, rather than being moved out into retirement homes. I also met elderly academics who still turned up to college dining halls to maintain their connection to community. So humane \u2013 and exactly how I would want to be cared for in my twilight years.<\/p>\n These colleges were designed to house a collection of (white) men who dedicated their whole lives to knowledge. If they taught at all, it was small group or one on one learning, which is less of a sensory challenge than a noisy class of 30 or 40 in a room lit by fluorescent lights. For a long time these men were expected to be celibate, which probably didn\u2019t trouble those amongst them who found relationships difficult. Issac Newton was famously socially awkward, which has prompted\u00a0at least one biographer to diagnose him as autistic<\/a>. The cloistered college life clearly suited Newton \u2013 I mean, you can\u2019t argue with the results, at least in terms of\u00a0deliverables<\/a>.<\/p>\n The Oxbridge college is a machine for thinking with where people who couldn\u2019t, or wouldn\u2019t, look after themselves were cared for. Privileged? Yes? Exclusionary? Hell yes. Neurodiverse friendly? Also, maybe yes?<\/p>\n The corporatised, neo-liberal, cash strapped universities that most of us inhabit now are no longer collegial machines for thinking with. We do our own laundry now \u2013 and fill in many forms, manage our social lives and teach larger numbers of students as well as try to compete for money, resources and status. Many of us neurotypicals struggle with the contemporary academic life,\u00a0 but the struggle intensifies for the neurodiverse amongst us.<\/p>\n To make academia neurodiverse friendly again \u2013 and in the process, make it better for all of us \u2013 is going to take effort. The model of the Oxbridge college is maybe not the way forward, but to find the way, we need to first have this conversation. In particular we need to make space to help neurodiverse people feel more comfortable \u2018coming out\u2019 and tell us what they need to succeed.<\/p>\n The conversation has started. The academic piece that moved me to tears was from a talk called\u00a0\u2018Don\u2019t mourn for us\u2019 by Jim Sinclair<\/a>. It\u2019s about parents acceptance of their autistic children, but the message is widely applicable beyond that:<\/p>\n