New podcast episode alert!!! Bc I know most of you prefer to read, below you will find some highlights from this much longer interview that have been lightly edited for clarity/length. You can listen on Substack, Spotify, or Apple, and find a full transcript
I loved this interview and feel so excited that critical adhd studies isn’t just about the what—ADHD as a topic—but also about the how—ADHD as a process—and even more meta is what is an ADHD process for studying the topic of ADHD? I’m so glad this is happening!
Hearing about the unpredictability of pace was soo affirming as I stumble-crawl towards finishing my masters dissertation. How to get ADHD voices into academia without destroying them in the process is a very important question. I've been fortunate enough to have an amazingly supportive supervisor who has taken on board and believed me, and my findings as I've found them, but it is HARD.
This makes me feel better, that things are starting to go the right way. I only just passed my research part of my Psychology in part because neurotypicals just refuse to understand us. One of the things I remember them saying was 'You brought nothing about creativity to light, but good work sharing things about ADHD' when all of the questions and all of the topics were about how, if at all, ADHD affected the creative process. Everything was about creativity! But because they mentioned experiences that are medicalised, the markers did not see it as an experience of creative. And all throughout the process I was pushed to talk to relatives of people with ADHD about ADHD and their lives and their experience. I had to write a Strongly Worded Email or two to even get my tutor to run it by the ethics board, who of course passed it, because it was ethically sound. Only to have the second marker* once again question the ethics of including someone in a phenomenological study just because he was autistic, marking a sarcastic comment that she'd hoped the ethics board had passed it. Well, yes, love, because it would be illegal if they hadn't. And I know ADHD people and autistic people can be easily manipulated, it's happened to me, but I still think that insisting that a man with a degree and a flat and a full-time job and a live-in girlfriend who he sometimes cares for as well cannot possibly give full and informed consent is off, frankly. It made me feel dehumanized just reading it. Like if we can never give consent, then all of life happens to use against our will and we're just large babies that need coddling. I don't know how much of this made sense, I'm still Big Mad about the whole thing, apparently. (*Half our year failed our research due to the poor quality of teaching, so we all got to have another go at writing our reports).
I loved this interview and feel so excited that critical adhd studies isn’t just about the what—ADHD as a topic—but also about the how—ADHD as a process—and even more meta is what is an ADHD process for studying the topic of ADHD? I’m so glad this is happening!
Hearing about the unpredictability of pace was soo affirming as I stumble-crawl towards finishing my masters dissertation. How to get ADHD voices into academia without destroying them in the process is a very important question. I've been fortunate enough to have an amazingly supportive supervisor who has taken on board and believed me, and my findings as I've found them, but it is HARD.
This makes me feel better, that things are starting to go the right way. I only just passed my research part of my Psychology in part because neurotypicals just refuse to understand us. One of the things I remember them saying was 'You brought nothing about creativity to light, but good work sharing things about ADHD' when all of the questions and all of the topics were about how, if at all, ADHD affected the creative process. Everything was about creativity! But because they mentioned experiences that are medicalised, the markers did not see it as an experience of creative. And all throughout the process I was pushed to talk to relatives of people with ADHD about ADHD and their lives and their experience. I had to write a Strongly Worded Email or two to even get my tutor to run it by the ethics board, who of course passed it, because it was ethically sound. Only to have the second marker* once again question the ethics of including someone in a phenomenological study just because he was autistic, marking a sarcastic comment that she'd hoped the ethics board had passed it. Well, yes, love, because it would be illegal if they hadn't. And I know ADHD people and autistic people can be easily manipulated, it's happened to me, but I still think that insisting that a man with a degree and a flat and a full-time job and a live-in girlfriend who he sometimes cares for as well cannot possibly give full and informed consent is off, frankly. It made me feel dehumanized just reading it. Like if we can never give consent, then all of life happens to use against our will and we're just large babies that need coddling. I don't know how much of this made sense, I'm still Big Mad about the whole thing, apparently. (*Half our year failed our research due to the poor quality of teaching, so we all got to have another go at writing our reports).