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Neurodiversity at Oxford supports, celebrates, and empowers neurodivergent staff and students. The first project of its kind, it addresses the current lack of support for neurodivergent staff in Oxford and will benefit staff and students across colleges and departments The project offers staff and students a rich set of resources and activities for information, support, building social and professional networks, and mentoring for neurodivergent graduate students and staff. It is supported by the Oxford Diversity Fund and jointly organised by Dr Laura Seymour and Prof Siân Grønlie. 

We are open to all neurodivergent staff and students. We do not wish to gatekeep neurodiversity and you do not need to be diagnosed in order to attend. If you think the event will be useful or of interest or resonate with your experience, we welcome you to attend!

We are run by and for neurodivergent university members, and encourage contribution and collaboration by coming to events, writing blog posts, and discussing and offering feedback on your experiences of academic life. We embrace Dr. Nick Walker's definition of neurodiversity as "the diversity of human minds, the infinite variation in neurocognitive functioning within our species" (more in Neuroqueer Heresies, 2014). We are committed to anti-racist and trans-inclusive practices in all our work. 

On our website and in our other documents like feedback questionnaires, we usually use the terms 'neurodiverse' and 'neurodiversity' (often together with neurodivergent); we respect that not everyone in our community will identify with these particular labels. We encourage others to use their own terminology to define themselves, and we aim to provide a welcoming and supportive space for absolutely everyone who wishes to attend our events and contribute to our community. We want people to use the language that they themselves prefer when writing blogposts or giving talks for us, and we hope that as our website grows we will see the rich range of language that can be used to describe who we are. 

When we do use ‘neurodiverse’, we will ensure to always make it clear through context whether we are referring to the neurodiversity of all people, or to those who are not neurotypical. We also see Neurodiversity at Oxford is a space for people to discuss these terms, so welcome further suggestions and feedback on our word choices! 

Georgia Lin, DPhil student in Education, is the current Project Coordinator. In 2021-2022, this role was fulfilled by Dr Joel Casey, and Dr Alvin Leung was the monitoring and learning advisor.

Accessibility is the foundation of the project. If we can do anything to make our events or initiatives more accessible, please let us know at neurodiverseox@st-annes.ox.ac.uk.