Presentations

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In-person 2026 (latest)

Preliminary version

Changes to this list of presentations for Autscape 2026 are still possible.
Updated: 11 June 2026

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AI uses for autistic minds: threats and opportunities

Presenter:
Malika Bouazzaoui
Description:
AI whether in generative AI form or within apps is increasingly used for a number of purposes, whether or not it was the intention of those who built it.
In this presentation, we will explore how AI can be used to help autistic minds thrive, both in a work and a personal context. We will cover using AI for executive functioning, emotional regulation, communication and mental health. We will also consider limitations and risk, and how to prevent a lot of the challenges of AI use.

But that’s not right! Challenges, complaints and the autistic sense of justice

Presenter:
Yo
Description:
This session will combine a presentation with an interactive (verbal) workshop. The presentation will discuss the autistic sense of justice and how this can and has fuelled complaints and challenges which can challenge injustice and improve public services and have a positive impact on society and will include audience participation via polling. In the interactive workshop participants will have the opportunity to consider how to harness their own sense of justice most effectively towards change. Participants will learn how complaints and challenges can be made most effective and have an opportunity to think about how this applies to situations they experience. This will include the importance of balancing the need to achieve justice and right wrongs on the one hand, with pragmatism and self-protective strategies on the other, to maximise the sustainability and effectiveness of challenges.

Changing perspectives writing workshop

Presenter:
Courtney Ward
Description:
We will be doing a writing workshop based on the topic of understanding and caring for our neurodivergent selves, changing perspectives from society’s point of view and gaining a voice within our selves and for others.
We will start off with a warm up to warm our creative flow, based off the word “strength”.
We will then have a written prompt of what we would say to our younger selves, how we would protect ourselves, what we would tell ourselves, kindness, how we feel and what we have been through.
We will then have a visual prompt of the beach/sea, the perfect environment through the lense of sea animals of what works for us and create our own world.

Exploring the historical context of the marginalisation of autistic women

Presenter:
Anna Blair
Description:
The recent growing inclusivity of autism diagnostic practice has largely been an increased recognition of autistic girls and women. This presentation will reflect on the historical context of autistic women, tracing current pushback to historical views on madness, misogyny in early autism research, and societal narratives around women and care.
Through this tracing, we will explore how autism challenges the ghost of gender in society, and the necessity of addressing the marginalisation of autistic women in both allistic and autistic spaces.

Free our people now

Presenter:
Simone Aspis
Description:
Free Our People Now campaign led by Neuro-divergent People and People with Learning difficulties with focus on ending inappropriate hospitalization of People with Learning Difficulties and Autistic People. https://www.inclusionlondon.org.uk/ This Government promise Autistic People will no longer detained within psychiatric hospitals for being Autistic under Mental Health Act 2025. Also, the law supposed to introduce stronger duties for Local Authorities to arrange housing and support provision for Autistic People to live good lives within their local communities.
The talk will be about:
  • Who is Free Our People Now including Bring People Home from Hospital.
  • Mental Health Act 2026 changes for Autistic People who are stuck in hospital.
  • What we are doing to make the Mental Health Act work.
  • What are we doing about the continued inhumane treatment that Autistic People experience on hospital wards.
  • How to become involved in the campaign?

Neurochauvenism: The start of a conversation

Presenter:
Jorik Mol
Description:
For a long time, we've considered autism, ADHD and other forms of divergent neurology as a biological distinction: our bodies are different from the norm. There is a litany of terms that seek to describe 'us', as distinct from 'them'. But what if we turned it around?
In 'Neurochauvinism: The Start of a Conversation', Jorik Mol follows up his 2023 keynote on alexithymia, emotional porousness and empathy (look for 'Feeling Fast and Slow' soon!), historicising the social exclusion we face as a community, through mainstream "neurotypical" culture. What is the purpose of having 'Autism' as a category of personhood? How does a set of stereotypes coalesce into a 'kind of person'? How do we queer what it is to be human, to have a brain? And how can we change society if it seems convinced we're not really people?
TL;DR: Jorik does neuroqueer cultural studies with dick jokes.

Neurodiversity, Autism, and Academic research

Presenter:
Daniel Gill
Description:
Academic and scientific research has historically been conducted about or on autistic people and thus has failed to consider our needs or interests. However, the rise of the neurodiversity framework has created an opportunity for research to be done in an inclusive and beneficial way.
This workshop will consider the societal implications of good and bad research for autistic people. With prompts, workshop participants will be encouraged to think about and discuss their personal relationship to scientific research: how they might have participated in research, how research can be done in an inclusive way, and how the results and findings of research are communicated to autistic stakeholders.
In this workshop, we aim to understand how we can bridge the gap between those who design and conduct research, and those who are impacted by it. Within this discussion, lived experience is just as valuable as academic credentials.

Playful bookbinding workshop

Presenter:
Sef
Description:
In this workshop, we will learn some simple bookbinding techniques for sewing hand-made books, and then go on to play with materials to make our own experimental books/pamphlets/structures. We will explore textures, colours and shapes of the paper and threads, and different forms of both useful and impractical-but-interesting-and-beautiful books. We will fold and stitch, feel the paper and its qualities, contemplate shades and shadows, pay attention to details. As well as creating an object, the aim is to explore joy in the process and sensory qualities of materials, and to co-create a space for playfulness without demands.
The workshop will include a demonstration of techniques and ideas, a chance to create your own notebook, and an opportunity to experiment.
Paper, thread and tools will be provided. Participants can bring their own paper/fabric/scraps/anything else they want to try stitching into a book or as a cover.

Proto-neurodiversity and autistic life at a rural care facility in Japan

Presenter:
Arden Tsang
Description:
In Japan, the government provides assistance to autistic people, such as free bus passes, to facilitate their living independently - despite this, the institutionalisation of neurodivergent people is significantly more common than in the UK.
After a brief overview of the diagnostic process and autistic life in Japan, this presentation will explore life at a residential facility which combines care with agriculture, based on the experiences of an autistic person who previously worked there.
It will cover:
  • the facility's driving philosophy and how it relates to the neurodiversity paradigm
  • daily life and work for the facility’s service users, and how it suits and does not suit autistic needs and wants
  • the implementation of "changing the environment to fit the person" by care workers
  • the existence of a hierarchy between the care workers and the service users, and navigation of said hierarchy by an autistic care worker

Proxy disclosure: how “neurodivergent” might perpetuate shame

Presenter:
Dr Mary Doherty
Description:
"Neurodivergent" is one of the most widely used words in autism discourse. It signals inclusion, community, and pride. But is it also doing something else?
This lecture argues that shame is the engine driving proxy disclosure – the substitution of "neurodivergent" for specific, stigmatised diagnoses. Rather than dismantling shame, the umbrella term may be entrenching it.
Among autistic doctors, psychiatrists are the least likely to disclose. Drawing on research with autistic clinicians, a preprint on autistic shame, and a paper (under consideration) at The Lancet tracing a devastating historical irony – Steve Silberman's argument that the DSM-III bore the hallmarks of an autistic mind – this lecture explores what proxy disclosure costs us as a community. Shame runs deeper for some diagnoses than others, and it shows in the language we choose for ourselves. At a moment when the legitimacy of autistic lived experience is under direct attack, the question of who names what, and why, is a question of power.

Visibility Logic: When systems only trust what they see

Presenter:
Marte Dalmo
Description:
This presentation introduces visibility logic, a framework for understanding how support systems interpret and reinforce autistic masking.
Visibility logic describes how autistic people’s needs are often recognised only when distress becomes visible in ways systems already know how to read. When we mask well, we may be seen as coping and therefore not needing support. When we do not mask, our autistic expressions may be misread as difficult, inappropriate, immature or pathological. Either way, support becomes dependent on how others interpret us from the outside.
Drawing on qualitative research with autistic adults, I will explain the concept, connect it to masking, epistemic injustice and the double empathy problem, and use concrete examples to show how this double bind appears in education, health and welfare systems.

What are you good at? A strengths identification workshop

Presenter:
Zoe McFarlane
Description:
Workshop format, preferably groups around tables.
Handouts provided, participants will be guided through strengths identification exercises based on positive psychology coaching. This will include group discussions of personal strengths and examples in small groups at tables.
Working from a pre-printed list of strengths words or identifying their own words participants will end up with a list of their top 3 and top 10 strengths.
There will be ideas and examples of follow up activities for after the workshop such as creating a strengths word cloud for display, writing a strengths poem or hand drawn strengths list.
I am hoping at the end a few people will agree to share their top 3 strengths to celebrate the diversity of autistic strengths

The autistic Ecosystem: An ecological approach to Autistic community and wellbeing

Presenter:
David Gray-Hammond
Description:
Autistic wellbeing disability has been framed for several decades through the lens of a binary between the medical and social model of disability. At NeuroHub Community, we have developed an ecological model of Autistic community and wellbeing that integrates physical health, immediate environments, and cultural institutions and power structures into a single cohesive, ecological model, demonstrating the interconnected nature of Autistic experience and wellbeing from the bodymind level through to the wider political and societal discourse of a given demographic.
The presentation aims to introduce the concept of the Ecosystemic model and explore it's implications for how we approach the wellbeing of Autistic and multiply marginalised individuals.