The Neurodiversity Reader – Call for Submissions

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The Neurodiversity Reader – Call for Submissions
Twenty years on – tracing the influence of the neurodiversity movement on theory and practice.

This is a call for submissions for an upcoming publication with Pavilion Press in association with PARC. Deadline for submissions of full drafts is August 30th 2019. Selected submissions will be taken forward for the published reader, whilst others will be published on the PARC website in a series of blogs (providing they do not contain material considered offensive by the editors).

Submissions should be between 1500 and 7000 words. Submissions do not have to be academic in nature and we would suggest to authors to write in an accessible style in order to be of value to a broad audience. Please send submissions to damianmilton.sociology@yahoo.com

Overview of the proposed reader:

The concept of neurodiversity can be traced to the late 1990s and the work of the autistic Australian sociologist Judy Singer (1998), with its origins within the autistic rights movement that had begun in earnest some years prior to that. Walker (2012) distinguishes between neurodiversity as a ‘brute fact’ that all human brains and minds are different, and the neurodiversity paradigm, which asserts that neurodiversity needs to be understood in terms of social dynamics in a similar way to other forms of diversity such as ethnicity, gender or class, including an analysis of power dynamics. As such, the neurodiversity paradigm can be associated with social models of disability rather than a traditional medical model of neuro-cognitive development. In the twenty years since the inception of these concepts, a strong international neurodiversity movement championing the civil rights of those deemed ‘neurodivergent’ from idealised norms has grown, rallying behind the slogan ‘nothing about us without us’. Alongside this political movement has been an increasing academic interest in the concept of neurodiversity and how such ideas can relate to practice and service provision.

This collection will bring together work within and beyond the neurodiversity movement to critically explore its associated concepts and how they might be translated into practice. The collection will likely be split into four main sections:

– Neurodiversity: a history of associated concepts
– Neurodiversity: not just about autism!
– Neurodiversity: learning from lived experience
– Neurodiversity: implications for practice

Editor Information:

Lead editor:
Dr. Damian Milton
Sub editors:
Dr. Dinah Murray
Prof. Nicola Martin
Dr. Susy Ridout
Prof. Richard Mills

All royalties for the publication will be held to reinvest into future PARC activities.