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The Centre for Community Engagement and Social Change (CCESC), along with Queen’s Office for Indigenous Initiatives, Queen’s Faculty of Education and the Re•Vision Centre for Art and Social Justice at the University of Guelph co-sponsored the Desiring Autism and Neurodivergence in Education Symposium and outreach initiative—a groundbreaking three-day event designed to reimagine how we understand, support, and celebrate neurodivergence in education.
Led by Dr. Patty Douglas, Desiring Autism and Neurodivergence in Education is an innovative outreach and knowledge mobilization initiative that advances critical, creative, decolonial, and intersectional perspectives on neurodivergence in education. The project brings together leading and emerging scholars, artists, self-advocates, and practitioners to enrich public and scholarly discourse, produce new curriculum and teaching material, improve public policies, and amplify training and mentorship opportunities for diverse autistic and neurodivergent students. The initiative featured four hybrid Student Knowledge Exchanges in 2024-25 to build a sustainable mentorship network, a forthcoming academic book and online resource hub (pedagogical resources) and 3-day hybrid event that happened in July 2024.
What’s It All About?
Although approximately 20-24% of the global population is neurodivergent (and 3% of Canadian children meet the criteria for autism) too many people still face:
- Misunderstanding and stigma
- Misdiagnosis or underdiagnosis, especially for women, girls and femme folks, Black, Indigenous and other racialized groups
- Ableism, disablism, and even violence in schools
- Systemic exclusion from education, work and life due to colonialist, ableist and racist educational structures
We believe these challenges can’t be solved by tweaks to the status quo. They demand radical imagination and action.
This outreach initiative centers critical, creative, decolonial, and intersectional perspectives on autism and neurodivergence, especially in educational systems that have too often pathologized or marginalized neurodivergent students.
Together, we’re asking:
- How can we dismantle the deficit-based ways of thinking about autism and neurodivergence in schools?
- What can we learn from diverse Black, Indigenous, racialized, queer, disabled, and neurodivergent activists, artists, and scholars?
- How do we build an educational future grounded in relationality, affirmation, access, and joy?
We are committed to making knowledge accessible by including plain language outputs and embedding access features throughout.
With over 300 participants, a planned academic book and online resource hub and other key outputs, this initiative is planting the seeds for long-term, reciprocal partnerships—the kind that don’t just study problems, but co-create solutions.
Read more about the project: https://www.restoryingautism.com/maineventpagee
Desiring Autism and Neurodivergence is supported in part by funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. 