Come As You Are: Sociological Reflections on Race, Neuro-Diversity & Higher Education

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Abstract

This paper is a collaborative reflection between two Black neurodivergent sociologists focused on race, neurodiversity and UK Higher Education (UKHE). Written and framed through a Black feminist methodology utilising dialogical knowledge production and collaborative autoethnography, the authors discuss their lived experiences of navigating neurotypical hegemony as students and now employed academics (Wright Mills, 1959; Hill Collins, 2012; Radulski, 2022). Their reflections attempt to contribute towards commentaries on the extent to which academia is ready to take seriously and remedy the ways in which the overindulged and neurotypical formations of teaching, learning and research exclude Black neurodivergent scholars.

The central argument illustrates that the conflation of both race and neurotypical hegemony expose Black neurodiverse scholars to a particular and pervasive form of double jeopardy (Fierros and Conroy, 2002). Whilst demonstrating the need to address how being Black scholars in general often require an ongoing negotiation with the workings of race and the hegemonic practices of the white western academy (Pilkington, 2013; Shilliam, 2015; Arday & Mirza, 2018), their dialogical and reflexive accounts situate the terrain of UKHE. In this way, the authors grapple with the racialisation of neurodiversity in the context of value, meritocracy and elitism.

Despite what could feel like a cultural shift in how neurodiversity is being discussed in certain public domains, considerations are presented on whether there is a truly accessible pathway available for Black neurodivergent scholars to come as (we) you are. In a highly neurotypical academy which still idolises scholarship that ostracises neurodiverse ways of working, writing and studying; concluding remarks present considerations and recommendations for a more purposeful engagement with race and neurodiversity in UKHE.

Authors

• Chantelle Jessica Lewis, University of Oxford
  Presenting Author

• Jason Arday, University of Glasgow