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I began my doctoral research believing I understood neurodivergent navigation through higher education. Diagnosed with dyslexia and dyspraxia at age 30, I had developed strategies over the past 20-plus years. When I began investigating neurodivergent student experiences, I positioned myself as someone who understood these challenges. I was not prepared for my own transition. This blog post explores how receiving multiple neurodivergent diagnoses during doctoral research shaped my insider/outsider positioning, and why this represents a methodological strength.

In November 2021, during my second year of doctoral studies, I received an autism diagnosis at age 56. Struggles I had attributed to personal inadequacy revealed themselves as autistic responses to neurotypically designed environments. Exhaustion after supervisory meetings was the toll of masking (Cage & Troxell-Whitman, 2019); difficulty with implicit expectations was a need for explicit communication. Two years later, an ADHD diagnosis added another dimension – hyperfocus alternating with paralysing inability to initiate tasks, traits requiring support rather than self-recrimination.

This diagnostic journey created a unique methodological positioning (Guba & Lincoln, 2005). I was researching transition challenges while experiencing my own fundamental transition – from perceiving myself as neurotypical to recognising my neurodivergent identity. Within a phenomenological framework centred on lived experience (Butcher & Lane, 2024), several of my eight participants described receiving diagnoses during or shortly after university, reframing their lives through newly understood neurodivergent identities. I lived this while attempting to analyse it academically.

This positions me beyond binary insider–outsider distinctions (Longville-Carr, 2024) – simultaneously understanding neurodivergent experiences from within while maintaining analytical distance. As Haraway (1988) argues, all knowledge is ‘situated’, emerging from particular social positions. When participants spoke about exhaustion from masking, about implicit expectations they could never grasp, about feeling simultaneously capable and incompetent, I did not need to imagine these experiences – I was navigating them in real time.

Yet neurodivergent researchers bring essential perspectives to neurodiversity research, embodying ‘nothing about us without us’ while maintaining scholarly rigour (McDowall & Kiseleva, 2024). Through reflexive thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2022) and deliberate reflexivity strategies, I ensured my lived experience informed rather than overrode participants’ voices. My personal assistant acted as an ‘alien observer’, reviewing transcripts to check my interpretations against participant meaning. A reflective journal captured moments where my diagnostic experiences surfaced during analysis. Crucially, my epistemological and ethical stance were grounded in participants’ perspectives, ensuring the framework emerged from their experiences rather than my own.

This positioning also raised pragmatic accessibility questions. As someone who supports other students through Disabled Students’ Allowances, I could not access study skills support myself – a professional conflict leaving me without traditional assistance. Instead, I pioneered AI-assistive technology, formally recognised in my learning adjustment plan and transparently documented throughout my thesis (Hanson, 2025). This is not academic dishonesty – it is legitimate accessibility support. The ideas, analysis and interpretations remain mine; the technology helps organise scattered thoughts into coherent academic prose.

‘My experience suggests that late-diagnosed neurodivergent researchers occupy a uniquely valuable methodological space.’

My experience suggests that late-diagnosed neurodivergent researchers occupy a uniquely valuable methodological space. We bring the analytical distance of an ‘outsider’ perspective alongside deep ‘insider’ understanding. Our diagnostic journeys during research enable us to experience firsthand the systems we study. This is not a methodological weakness requiring correction – it is a methodological strength requiring recognition.

As higher education increasingly acknowledges neurodiversity, we must recognise that neurodivergent researchers are not just studying these experiences – we are living them, often discovering our own neurodivergence through the research we conduct. This meta-transition enriches our work with insights only available to those who navigate both worlds simultaneously.

References

Braun, V., & Clarke, V. (2022). Thematic analysis: A practical guide. Sage.

Butcher, J., & Lane, M. (2024). Neurodivergent student experiences of access and inclusion in higher education. Higher Education Research & Development, 43(6), 1308–1323.

Cage, E., & Troxell-Whitman, Z. (2019). Understanding the reasons, contexts and costs of camouflaging for autistic adults. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 49(5), 1899–1911.

Guba, E. G., & Lincoln, Y. S. (2005). Paradigmatic controversies, contradictions, and emerging confluences. In N. K. Denzin & Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.), The Sage handbook of qualitative research (3rd ed., pp. 191–215). Sage.

Hanson, J. (2025). Neurodivergent students’ transitions from higher education to employment: A bioecological case study [Doctoral thesis, York St John University].

Haraway, D. (1988). Situated knowledges: The science question in feminism and the privilege of partial perspective. Feminist Studies, 14(3), 575–599.

Longville-Carr, A. (2024). Autistic students’ transition to university: Barriers to a positive experience [Doctoral thesis, Open University].

McDowall, A., & Kiseleva, M. (2024). Neurodivergent perspectives in organisational research. Human Resource Management Journal, 34(2), 245–267.