What is Autistic PhD?
We publicly launched Autistic PhD on May 14, 2023, so this is still very new – but welcome!
Let me share a smattering of starting thoughts, which can let you know my heart a bit. There is so much we hope to share with all of you through this project.
Overall, the style of Autistic PhD is accessible and readable, grounded in narrative experience and observation, and with appropriate science/literature citing things throughout. Our intended audience includes neurodivergent people and those who care about their well-being, some of whom may be fellow academics while others may be readers who find some of the more scientific reading to be too heavy.
We hope to be a happy middle ground of readability, relatability, and quality shareable resources with reference lists as appropriate.
Some articles have no citations, others have many citations. For example, Rachael started off the Brochures category with Five Tips for Dating an Autistic Person.
That article is one of the most popular on the site to date. Autistic people can share the short link to that digital brochure with a potential date, who can learn some things in advance without the autistic person having to explain a lot every time around, you know?
If you’re here and you’re reading this, you probably know. It’s pretty neat.
By far the most popular article on the site to date has been Erika’s coverage of the AMA’s Resolution to remove ABA from the named list of approved treatments for autism. That ABA piece is long form, and includes many citations, including discussion of a recent publication by autistic researchers who wrote about their hopes for the future of autism research.
We have so much here already, with a lot more to come!
If you are looking to connect with others, please join the active facebook community. We are proud of the antiracist, accessible, neurodivergent-affirming space that the Autistic PhD FB page is shaping up to be.