Do you speak for all autistics?

Of course not. And unlike a certain appropriative US-based organization that shall not be named, we don’t purport to do so. Further unlike that infamous organization, Autistic PhD is principally run by an autistic person, and centers autistic people and their varied experiences in anything we share.

For example, while we occassionally share content that may be helpful to parents of autistic children, the focus is on the well-being of autistic children, not on making allistic parents feel better.

Each article on the Autistic PhD website is the individual work and opinion of the noted author, with citations as appropriate. An author may often describe their experience in autistic spaces and communities. This can be somewhat generalized but the author’s positionality is transparent and we believe it’s important to note this and to leave space for the full variation of human difference.

Here at Autistic PhD we believe in the power of the narrative of lived experience as a key source of knowledge. As such, we prioritize the writing and opinions of autistic scholars and professionals who draw upon their own lived experiences coupled with their expertise as gained through the credentialing, gatekeeping institutions of academia.

Graduate degrees give credibility in some contexts, and potentially some skills that can be useful to helping us to sort the knowledge gained from life in helpful ways that lead to more skillful application of knowledge and service delivery that we offer in our professional lives.

But we hope to never lose the narrative here, which is why stories are central to the articles you read at Autistic PhD. Some may also be grounded in scientific scholarship as appropriate, because we are in dialogue with the extant scholarly literature related to what we do.

Other articles on here need not include a reference list at all, because knowledge comes from many places. Together we seek to build that body of references, adding what we know and how we do what we do in our lives, for the readers’ consideration.