Integrating neurodiversity and open scholarship
This team is responsible for discussing how open scholarship can be used to support the neurodiversity movement and enhance connections between open scholarship and neurodiversity; and how neurodiversity and open scholarship can intersect to make higher education more inclusive and accessible.
Although originally written about autistic people, we believe that this quote summarises our approach to all forms of neurodiversity:
‘Their strengths and deficits do not deny them humanity but, rather, shape their humanity’ ( Grinker, 2010, p.173).
Our work falls into several general areas. Here, you can find resources related to each.
Our piece in the Association for Psychological Science’s Observer magazine was commissioned as part of their Global Spotlight series. In it, we explain how supporting the messages of both open scholarship and neurodiversity will ensure that the goals of diversity, equity, and inclusion reach across populations and explicitly include neurodivergent people. This is a readable introduction to issues regarding neurodiversity in psychology.
For ADHD Awareness Month 2022, our members shared their thoughts on what ADHD is, advice for others, and what they like about their ADHD brain. Our aim was to promote understanding of ADHD among academics. We hope to repeat this with other awareness and acceptance celebrations in the future.
We are currently developing a survey which will research the experiences of neurodivergent scholars in academia. We hope that this will generate valuable data for understanding neurodivergent academics’ lives and careers.
We are developing a qualitative research project investigating the potentially unique ways that ADHDers do research or contribute to science, and the institutional and socio-cultural barriers to inclusion and career progression for ADHDer academics. We hope that this will provide in-depth information about the experiences of people whose voices are rarely heard.
We are writing a manuscript which aims to promote Open Scholarship to academics and clinicians who research autism. In this, we will address criticisms of autism research and provide concrete suggestions for improved practices.
We are developing a new, equity-based framework tailored to systemic biases and barriers in academia. We hope that this will be a useful diversity, equity and inclusion tool for academics to self-reflect, train each other, or make authorship decisions. Watch our video to find out more.
The Academic Wheel of Privilege has been featured in:
We are developing a database that will collect together papers authored by neurodiverse scholars, to enable educators to create a more diverse curriculum. This work is supported by a Grant-In-Aid to Reduce Barriers to Improving Psychological Science, awarded by the Society for the Improvement of Psychological Science (SIPS).
Our article in the BPS Cognitive Psychology Bulletin discusses how participatory research can benefit open scholarship and vice versa, leading to a more generalisable and accurate science of human behaviour and cognition.
We are currently writing a manuscript which aims to reconcile Big Team Science with participatory research approaches. Big Team Science projects rarely include participants in the development of research questions and methodology. We argue that participatory approaches can improve Big Team Science by ensuring that large-scale research projects listen to and serve the communities they are researching.
We are currently working on a manuscript which aims to encourage educators to rethink discriminatory practices embedded in academia, and to embrace Universal Design for Learning.
Team Neurodiversity member Jenny Mai Phan presented a talk titled “Neurodiversity and Open Scholarship: Guiding principles and practices for research and Higher Education”. This was presented on 29th June 2022, at RIOT Science Club’s 2022 conference on Teaching and Mentoring Open Research.
We recommend this talk for educators and researchers who wish to integrate intersectionality into their work. The talk outlined why neurodiversity and intersectionality should be embedded into open research teaching and mentorship. Jenny also provides useful strategies for achieving this.
Our work has been featured in:
Team Neurodiversity was founded in 2021 by Mahmoud Elsherif, Tamara Kalandaze and Amélie Gourdon-Kanhukamwe. Please see our blog post for FORRT’s Educators’ Corner for more information about how Team Neurodiversity was formed, why it is needed, and our plans for future work. At the moment, the group channel has over 70 members who come from Europe, North America and Asia.
We have a rotating leadership team which changes every six months. To promote diverse and inclusive leadership, anyone can put themselves forward for this role, regardless of their experience.
The current team leaders are Magdalena Grose-Hodge and Bethan Iley.
Thank you to our previous team leaders: Amélie Gourdon-Kanhukamwe, Flávio Azevedo, and Mahmoud Elsherif.
We’re always welcoming new members. You do not need to be neurodivergent to take part. Find out more about getting involved with FORRT.