Neurodiversity Matters: Elizabeth Hauke on neurodivergent autoethnography and inclusive education

Autoethnographers use their personal experiences to explore wider issues, relationships, or situations. So what happens if you experience the world differently to neurotypical people? Sohail speaks to Dr Elizabeth Hauke about how the process of autoethnography helped reveal her own diagnosis, and how autoethnography can help surface thinking and create a rich depth of communication that values neurodivergent (as well as typical) processing. They go on to discuss inclusivity in education, in everything from course design to assessment, and ask the big question: can you really take normative ideals out of the university?

Dr Elizabeth Hauke is a Principal Teaching Fellow at Imperial College London, and the founder of Change Makers within Imperial Horizons and iExplore. Elizabeth developed the Live, Love, Learn approach to curriculum design that centres the student, their experience, community and existing knowledge within their learning. This transdisciplinary approach has been used to create numerous modules that are available to all undergraduate students at Imperial as part of their degree studies. 

Elizabeth is an autistic practitioner-researcher, using auto- and ethnographic approaches to examine authenticity in higher education. Elizabeth explores student centred, active learning, reimagining the higher education classroom and learning experience to promote true inclusivity. Her current work focuses on de-normativisation of the classroom. 

Elizabeth has an upcoming book – Space, Time and Encounter in the University Classroom being published later this year by Bloomsbury as part of their Alternative Education series.