Nov 09, 2026 | 4-6 pm: Dr. Jill Pluquailec (Sheffield Hallam University) & Prof. Dr. Alicia Broderick (Montclair State University)

         Further information coming soon…

The Autism Lecture Series takes place digitally via Zoom. If you would like to be added to the mailing list, please contact us: autism_studies(at)ph-freiburg.de 

3.   May 11, 2026 | 4-6 pm: Assoc. Prof. Dr. Patty Douglas (Queen's University): “Unfixing Autism: Re•Storying Methodology as Movement”  &  Prof. Dr. Michael Orsini (University of Ottawa): “Unknowing Autism: Education as a Site of Neuronormative Resistance”

2.   Nov 04, 2025 | 4-6 pm: Dr. des. Julia Tierbach (University of Siegen): “Autism in Education and the Role of Symbolic Violence - Because Representation Matters (?)” &  Prof. Dr. Thomas Hoffmann (Humboldt University Berlin): “The Neuronal Subject, or: Autism between Liberation and Lifestyle”

1.   May 19, 2025 | 4-6 pm: Dr. Allison Moore (Edge Hill University): “Trauma informed approaches to working with autistic students in Higher Education”  &  Dr. Damian Milton (University of Kent): “Educational ideology and the autistic learner”

Organized by the research collective AutiSE (University of Education Freiburg, Germany), the international Lecture Series "Autism Studies in Education – Methodologies l Critique l Representation” aims to bring together perspectives on how to critically approach autism as a contested phenomenon. We invite contributions that reflect on different ways to address the entanglements of diagnosis-based categorization and representation in the context of education and educational sciences. The lecture series is intended as a forum and network for discussing competing views on what it means to do engaged, emancipatory and/or critical autism research – and takes the following questions as its starting point: 

• Methodologies: What are the methodological and epistemological challenges of inclusive, community driven and emancipatory research? How can transformative perspectives on autism be developed and communicated? How can community interests be assessed given the heterogeneity of the autistic community? What is the relationship between scientific interests and community interests? Who determines the value of community driven and emancipatory research? 

• Critique: What makes Critical Autism Studies ‘critical’? What theoretical foundations of critique does it rely on? How does critical autism research negotiate norms and normativity? What norms are being critiqued and what norms is this critique based on? How does situatedness impact competing understandings of critique? 

• Representation: Are the specific representation goals of scientific or political nature – and what is the difference? Is representation a necessary prerequisite of emancipatory research? Do different types of research require different levels of representation? How is representation in research de-/legitmized? What ideas of autism, neurodiversity, knowledge (production) and scientific research are produced as a result?