This blog post was written by Jamie Williams, co-director of Spectrum First Education Ltd, who has been working with ISJ academics to explore how Higher Education can actively recognise and support the needs of increasingly neurodiverse campuses. Funded by our Community Research Grants.

 

Why research matters to us (Spectrum First)

Since its founding by Christine Breakey in 2003, Spectrum First has been a company built on social justice values and implementing cutting-edge neurodiversity-positive research into its support practices.

By reflecting on insights from research shaped by the voices of neurodivergent people and our direct experiences of providing support, we can continually update and improve our practice.

We are incredibly proud that, over the past year, we have taken this further by contributing to the production of new research ourselves, through Project INC. This has been an inspiring, creative, and joyful journey with amazing people, and it’s just the beginning!

INC’s insights are being shared with universities at all levels, and we intend this work to inform positive and lasting changes in how Higher Education can actively recognise and support the needs of increasingly neurodiverse campuses across the UK.

To hear about the project’s latest talks, appearances, publications and resources, please sign up for our mailing list by visiting our padlet.

We’re currently analysing the rich and wonderful data we received, but we couldn’t wait to tell you about our experiences—what we’ve heard, learned, and done—and how this is already influencing our work.

The story so far…

Following our work on the collaborative Supporting the Mental Health of Autistic Students (SMHAS) project led by Dr Felicity Sedgewick, we knew we wanted to continue our involvement in research projects which embodied co-productive “nothing about us, without us” values.

So in Summer 2023 our research lead submitted an application for a Community Research Grant (CRG) funded by the Institute for Social Justice at York St John. Wonderfully, this was quickly picked up by YSJ’s Professor Lorna Hamilton and Dr Stephanie Petty,  who suggested that we meet to explore a potential collaboration.

We were already familiar with Lorna and Stephanie’s excellent “Compassionate Pedagogy in Higher Education: A Conceptual Analysis“, which aligned with our longstanding belief that, for neurodivergent students to thrive, educational institutions must proactively accommodate diverse learning and attention profiles – while stepping away from diagnostic and crisis-led support models.

Getting started: an instant connection!

As with all successful collaborations, we immediately felt a shared connection over the things that mattered to us and quickly identified a shared set of values and principles of what we would want a collaboration to do:

⭐️ Invite staff and students to tell us what they wanted to, how they wanted to – through creative, open and democratising channels for participation

⭐️Share ownership with a mixed-neurotype advisory group of community members, who shape every stage of the research process

⭐️ Proactively and playfully remove some of the barriers to research participation which traditionally inhibit neurodivergent people’s participation; through flexible and accessible data collection, ensuring the people whose voices often disappear from traditional research are heard

⭐️ Adopt an inclusive and non-pathologising approach to considering neurodiversity –  inviting participation from anyone identifying as neurodivergent who inhabits the University

⭐️ To formulate new knowledge that will inform mentoring, tutoring and training approaches

Under the cooordination of Professor Matthew Reason from ISJ, we began building our proposal in a series of meetings that increasingly felt like the beginning of a vital and wonderful partnership.

From “Admiring the problem” to ‘What works’…

One of the things that has excited us most about working with Lorna and Stephanie was how much we agreed that change is best inspired through positive messaging!

There is a lot of excellent existing research that details the barriers neurodivergent students encounter in University contexts. Listening to nuanced accounts of such experiences is crucial. We hear about this daily when supporting students and university professionals, and it is a core part of what Project INC wanted to hear about. Neurodivergent students often tell us they don’t feel like their struggles are noticed, and we wanted to ensure we heard them.

However, we also wanted to enact achievable changes based on what people told us. We wanted to go beyond “admiring the problem”, not only asking “what’s wrong?” but also “what works?” – by identifying existing good practices and making pragmatic recommendations to inspire change at all levels of HE.

By showing what neurodiversity-affirming practice is already being achieved within the current constraints of the HE landscape, adjustments cannot be dismissed as an abstract but unachievable wish.

Instead of concluding with a set of ideals that were unlikely to be implemented, we wanted recommendations that could be delivered quickly to those at the higher levels of University governance regarding improving experiences for neurodivergent staff and students.  In policy recommendations. In talks. In papers. In visible fixtures around the campus.

This aligns closely with Spectrum First’s long-standing ethos of working closely with partners, to build provision together through open collaboration and improving the experiences of all students, staff, and managers.

What did we do?

We began our research with the objective of exploring neurodivergent experiences on YSJ’s campus to identify the barriers that need to be addressed and ‘what works’ to alleviate them. 

To do this, we took the following steps:

a. Inclusive recruitment

We undertook an extensive recruitment phase to find a Research Associate to join us to work on Project INC, determined not to impose barriers that neurodivergent applicants often face during job applications and interviews.

We were well-placed to do this, combining our collective experience from Lorna’s tenure as Head of the Psychology Department, Stephanie’s exemplary research into minor workplace adjustments that can benefit autistic employees, and our extensive history of successfully hiring and accommodating the needs of a sizeable neurodiverse team.

This resulted in flexible application, screening, interviewing and feedback practices, which applicants praised for their inclusivity. One applicant said it was the first time they’d felt they could be their authentic selves in an interview, and we felt hugely rewarded by the open and rich interviews we held.

Through this process, we were introduced to the incredible Christian Hanser and, in fact, the recruitment was such a positive experience that we wrote a paper about it!

You can read Sharing an Example of Neurodiversity Affirmative Hiring, Stephanie Petty, Christian H. Hanser, James A. Williams, and Lorna G. Hamilton. Autism in Adulthood (2025)

Enter the Participatory Advisory Group (PAG)! Establishing authentic co-participation

From the outset, we knew that we wanted to achieve the highest levels of co-production and participation, bringing in and being led by the voices of the individuals from the community we were looking to support.

Being critically reflective and avoiding a researcher-led agenda was really important to us – as was only claiming to be doing participatory research if there was significant influence at every stage of the process.

We had a question to answer: How can we achieve authentic participation within a relatively tight time and budget?

We set up the Participatory Advisory Group (PAG) to explore this, and we were hugely lucky to be joined by a fantastic mixed-neurotype group of students, former students, and professionals who had experience with the YSJ campus and wanted to take an active role throughout the project.

The PAG has shaped every aspect of the research by:

⭐️ Providing crucial feedback at every part of the process

⭐️ Telling us they were sick of seeing diagnostic labels and stereotypes, or clinical language and imagery that didn’t speak to their experiences, in research

⭐️ Contributing designs, posters and wording for recruitment material and our online padlet (see pictures!)

⭐️ Contributing questions and collaborating on our interview schedule.

For the research team, this has been an absolute joy and a means of genuinely sharing the responsibility for the project. In fact, such was their influence that when we needed to recruit additional Research Associates, we did so from within the group, extending the PAG’s influence further.

b. Getting on campus, online and interviewing

One of the strongest messages from our PAG was how we needed to make participating as accessible, flexible and inclusive as possible if we wanted to hear the voices that traditional research projects don’t.

We took a two-stage approach to this.

Stage 1: working collaboratively with the PAG, we devised a series of on-campus installations with banners, stands, and posters to visibly represent a non-diagnosis-led and authentically neurodiversity-affirming project taking up space!

We also dotted post boxes around locations on campus and invited people to post anything they wanted to tell us about their experiences there.

Alongside these physical installations, we hosted an online Padlet space where anyone could post anonymously about anything they’d like to tell us in response to prompts based on discussions with the PAG or in response to each other.

This gave us a ‘live’ stream of data which people could see at all times, with no limitations on when people shared their perspectives, where they shared it from, or how many times they revisited to elaborate on their thoughts.

Stage 2: We took the responses from the Padlet and Post-boxes and working alongside the PAG formulated an interview schedule.

We held completely flexible, person-centred interviews in ways that suited participants’ communication and processing preferences – inviting people to speak, type, draw, take breaks, look at the padlet and do whatever they needed to regulate. All of this led to wonderful encounters and data collection on campus and online, in which neurodivergent students and staff shared their experiences with us, with many telling us they would never have usually participated in any study.

What have we heard so far?

We are still making our way through the incredible data we collected. Anyone who attended our recent talks at this year’s Neurodiversity in Higher Education conference at YSJ or the University of Sheffield’s Removing Barriers conference will know how excited we are to share our initial findings. The perspectives we heard were so rich with detail specific to the individuals who shared their stories with us.

However, what was astounding was how consistent the key messages that: 

⭐️ Belonging is at the heart of inclusive practice and must be achieved through continuous collaboration between parties within all levels of Higher Education through direct support, institutional practices and policies. It has to be an active and ongoing process

⭐️ All experiences at university are interconnected, but many are unspoken, with neurodivergent people often holding hidden workloads and burdens

⭐️ Responsibility for an individual’s success must be shared throughout institutions and based on provision rather than luck

⭐️ Open, proactive, curious and compassionate conversation removes self-advocacy and masking barriers

⭐️ Neurodiversity affirming support from within Universities and specialist third parties (like us!) enables students and staff to feel they can be their authentic selves and utilise their strengths

⭐️ Authentic and visible representations of neurodiversity and welcoming spaces on campus are essential to feelings of safety

⭐️ In order to learn, work and thrive, environments must be suitable by default and flexible options for diverse engagement must be present

What we have heard so far is already helping us improve our own practice of helping students, professionals, and departments access inclusive education and thrive.

We are currently preparing training for our team and other institutions based on these insights, and will be developing these further as our research continues.

Ultimately, we hope this work will enhance education, well-being, and employment outcomes for neurodivergent individuals in the UK and internationally, while contributing to reshaping how higher education and professional environments address the needs of neurodiverse communities. 

What’s next?

Wonderfully, the connection the Project INC team felt through our work together has only deepened over the course of the project.

INC’s insights were presented to 350 delegates at this year’s Neurodiversity in Higher Education Conference at YSJ and the well attended Removing Barriers conference at the University of Sheffield.

We hope that this research will improve the experiences of students and staff at YSJ and, more broadly, at other educational institutions and professional organisations. To this end, we are partnering with other universities to share INC’s methods and key findings.

Project INC has already been cited in training within public-sector, charity, higher education, and private-sector contexts.

The INC themes contributing to active belonging, such as ‘Believe me, talk to me’, ‘Shared responsibility’ and ‘Identity spaces’ are already informing the support that Spectrum First provides for University students and professionals at all levels, whether it is being used in one to one strategy development, or is being shared with Student Support, Academic, or HR Departments.

The core message of ‘what works’ is something people can connect to and be inspired by how individuals who perceive and work differently can thrive in many different contexts.We are excited to see where it goes and how far it can spread!

Please join us on the rest of this wonderful journey by visiting our padlet and signing up to our mailing list to receive updates on our latest talks, appearances, publications and resources.