Louise Creechan, co-organiser of the Critical Neurodiversity Studies Conference taking place this week, introduces the event’s Polyphony takeover.
Critical Neurodiversity Studies: Directions/Intersections/Contradictions is a free fully-hybrid international conference taking place this week (24-26 June 2025) at Durham University and online.
We believe that this will be the first formal research event in this field undertaken at this scale, but – as with all emergent disciplines – pinpointing a starting point or point of departure from previous scholarship is extremely difficult and somewhat unwise. This conference is responding to a gathering energy and engagement with neurodiversity across disciplines and methodologies. Our speakers are presenting on wide-ranging topics, from the neurotypicality of the law, to indigenous constructions of neurological atypicality, to Celtic fairy-brides, and in formats as varied as a table-top RPG, ceramics, and dance. All united by a critical engagement with neurodiversity.
What is ‘critical neurodiversity studies’?
That is exactly the question that we hope the conference will answer! In recent years we have seen the emergence of a distinct reframing of neurodiversity that utilises and blends the frameworks of the arts, humanities, and social sciences to situate neurodiversity as a driver of critique – rather than as the object of study.
There are many lines of thought that are currently informing our thinking – but those I share below will only be a snapshot of the variety and richness of this field.
- One of the aims of critical neurodiversity studies is to recognise neurodiversity as a currently overlooked intersection of identity and critique that ought to be valued and theorised in the same ways as further advanced critical discourses of gender, race, queerness, class, and disability – and developed in conversation with these fields.
- Critical neurodiversity studies attends to diversity – of approach, of method, of perspective, and of researcher.
- Originating out of the Neurodiversity Movement of the 1990s, the field is fundamentally entangled with activism, liberatory politics, and disability justice.
- The field has a dual focus – for some researchers, it is as concerned with the question of how we do research in a way that centres our neurodivergences as with the intellectual intervention of that research.
What we do know is that that the potentialities of this field are as diverse as its name suggests.
By focusing our attention on new directions, on how neurodiversity operates (or fails to operate) intersectionality, and on the contradictions that emerge as we place different facets of this work in dialogue with one another, we hope that this conference will enable us to sketch out a more definitive answer to ‘what is critical neurodiversity studies’?
What can we expect from this Polyphony takeover?
This takeover will feature articles written by recipients of our Global Critical Neurodiversity Fellowships and our Critical Neurodiversity Fellowships, programmes that have enabled brilliant, multiply marginalised scholars from the Global South, independent scholars, unfunded PhD students, and precarious early career researchers, to attend and contribute to the conference. These scholars are working at the cutting-edge of critical neurodiversity studies and it is an absolute honour to share their work with The Polyphony readership. In the coming days (23-30 June), we will be sharing articles looking at neurodiversity and Christian liberation theology, neuroqueering in Indian public schools, non-Western experiences and conceptions of neurodivergence, conversations between Mad and neurodiversity approaches, and whether neurodivergent communication exists, as testament to the variety, rigour, and future directions of this emergent field. As we publish these pieces they will appear under the Critical Neurodiversity Studies Conference 2025 tag on the site.
Register for online attendance at the Critical Neurodiversity Studies Conference 2025.
