Posts tagged news

Participatory Autism Research - Fourth Seminar, London

We are delighted to announce the programme for our fourth Shaping Autism Research seminar, which is focused specifically on participatory autism research.

As you may well know, there has been a substantial increase in research activity on autism during the past decade. But little of this research has concentrated on the everyday needs of autistic people and even less has been shaped directly by autistic people and their families; read more here. Involving community members in research - from the very inception of an idea to research design to implementation and interpretation of findings - is one vital means of ensuring that more of the research that gets done has a direct and sustained impact on those who need it most.

The goals of this fourth seminar are therefore to: 

1. Examine the different ways to conducting participatory research, drawing from such work both inside and outside the field of autism, 

2. Discuss the opportunities and challenges to involving the autistic community in research, and 

3. Determine ways to overcome any such challenges. 

Please note that seminar places are extremely limited. The seminar will not be recorded but you can follow the discussions on Twitter @Autresearchuk, #shapeARUK

We look forward to seeing you there!

A new way to share seminar outputs…

The Shaping Autism Research seminar series aims to set a new collaborative direction for the future of autism research in the UK, incorporating the perspectives of researchers, practitioners, autistic people and their families on equal terms. One way to set out on this collaborative pathway is to ensure that outputs from the seminar series are not developed only by the organising group but are shared with the community during the draft phase.

To this end we will be sharing on this site drafts of each of the proposed main seminar outputs, as .doc files, and inviting commentators to send us their feedback by posting in the comment box for each document post or using Google Docs to share comments. As each seminar in the series takes place, and the information and discussions are captured, these documents will be updated and new drafts will be posted on this page.

We encourage you all to read and comment on these documents so that we can produce outputs which can become useful tools to shape autism research of the future.

Reflections on the first #shapeARUK seminar

by Kabie Brook, co-host in Edinburgh, Autistic activist, and co-founder of Autism Rights Group Highland 

As co-host for seminar one: Autism Practice, I had the chance to help shape the series - in a small yet significant way, by assisting with the environment, Autistic access and representation. As this was the first seminar it was easier to make suggestions and steer things in a way that didn’t challenge any perceived norms of the series. As it turned out though, that wasn’t as significant as I expected. The organising team and Sue in particular seemed up for anything and (for me) it was the easiest non Autistic led (collaborative) event that I’ve ever been involved in.  Usually, in my experience trying to ensure that organisers make autism related conferences and other events accessible is a harder struggle than it should be and often even from people who purport to be ‘autism experts’ there’s a lot of resistance to actually including us or even considering access for us.

Read more »