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Re•Storying Autism

Re•Storying Autism is an interdisciplinary team of makers, artists, researchers, educators, whānau (family and kin), and practitioners transforming deficit understandings of autism and practices in education . Some of us identify as Autistic. Others of us do not. What we share in common is a desire to more deeply understand what affirmative practice means in education and allied fields in ways that embrace Autistic ways of being as fundamental to the world and life.

Research Team

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Patty Douglas

Principal Investigator

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  • Carla Rice is a Canada Research Chair and Professor in the College of Social and Applied Human Studies at the University of Guelph, and founder of Re•Vision: The Centre for Art and Social Justice, an arts-informed research centre with a mandate to foster social well-being, equity, and justice. She currently is Principal Investigator of and co-directs Bodies in Translation: Activist Art, Technology and Access to Life, a multi-year, multi-site disability arts grant. Rice has extensive experience in collaboratively developing cross-sectoral, multi-disciplinary research projects, and is an expert in qualitative, arts-based and digital research methodologies.

Co-Investigator

Carla Rice

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Rachel Herron

  • Rachel Herron is an Associate Professor in the Department of Geography and Environment at Brandon University and a Canada Research Chair in Rural and Remote Mental Health. She is also the founding Director of the Centre for Critical Studies of Rural Mental Health at Brandon University. Her current research examines the vulnerability and complexity of relationships of care, social inclusion and meaningful engagement for people living with mental health problems, and the diversity of lived experiences of rural mental health.

Co-Investigator and Project Accountability & Care Team

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Margaret (Meg) Gibson

  • Margaret (Meg) Gibson is an Assistant Professor in Social Development Studies and Social Work at Renison University College, affiliated with the University of Waterloo. Her scholarship and teaching focus on queer and trans studies, critical disability studies, social work, feminist research methods, and the history and philosophy of social services. One of her current projects is Neurodiversity Matters, which explores how people are using the language and ideas of neurodiversity, and is funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

Co-Investigator and Project Accountability & Care Team

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Elizabeth Jackson

  • Dr. Elizabeth Jackson (she/her) has experience in critical community engaged scholarship, arts-based research, and interdisciplinary scholarship. As Director of the Community Engaged Scholarship Institute at the University of Guelph, she works to facilitate mutually beneficial community-university partnerships. A lover of song and story, Liz firmly believes in the potential of art-based community making to increase well-being and contribute to struggles for social justice.

Collaborator and Project Accountability & Care Team

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Stephen Connolly

  • Stephen is an autistic academic at Sheffield Hallam University's Autism Centre, he teaches on the MA Autism and the BA Education Studies with Autism, SEN and Disability. His research interests are around ethics, autism and physical education, autistic experiences in Higher Education and the Emanciparticipatory approach to research.

Project Accountability & Care Team

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Katherine
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  • Katherine Runswick-Cole is Chair in Education and Director of Research in The School of Education at the University of Sheffield, United Kingdom. She is also an Executive Board member of the interdisciplinary research institute iHuman. Katherine's research and teaching focus on critical disability studies, disabled children's childhood studies, and critical autism studies. Her work is also informed by feminist and critical psychological approaches. An example of her current projects includes: Living Life to the Fullest: Life, Death, Disability and the Human (Funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, UK).

Collaborator

Nancy Marshall

  • I am a Child and Youth Worker who has supported teachers and autistic students in Special Education classrooms for ten years. I am currently doing Doctoral research in the Faculty of Education at York University. My research aims to explore the impacts and outcomes of Applied Behavioural Analysis, which is currently the most recommended treatment approach for autistic young people in Ontario. I hope to fill gaps in the existing academic literature with the voices of autistic people.

Collaborator

Sheryl Peters

  • Sheryl Peters has joined us as Project Coordinator. She is a Winnipeg-based social researcher, documentary filmmaker and artist. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Fine Arts and a Master’s degree in Sociology. Her research work focuses on social equity, health and well-being of women and older adults, person-centred health care, and decolonizing/anti-oppressive research methods.

Project Coordinator

Julia Gray

  • Julia Gray is a playwright and theatre director, as well as a performance and cultural studies scholar and critical social scientist. She is interested in overturning cultural assumptions of disability and aging through the arts. She is currently a Visiting Scholar at Sensorium, a creative research centre in The School of the Arts, Media Performance and Design at York University in Toronto, Canada, as well as an Academic Fellow at the Centre for Critical Qualitative Health Research at the University of Toronto.

Collaborator

Penny Fogg

  • Penny Fogg is a critical psychologist and an Associate Tutor on the Sheffield University Doctorate in Educational & Child Psychology.

Collaborator

Julia Gruson-Wood

  • Julia Gruson-Wood is an interdisciplinary health scholar and postdoctoral fellow of Gender, Family, and Health at the University of Guelph. She holds a doctorate in Science & Technology Studies and completed a critical ethnography of the culture and practices of applied behaviour therapy providers. Julia is a research Affiliate at Re•Vision: The Centre for Art and Social Justice, and is working on her first book, Remaking Autism, Reshaping Therapies.

Collaborator

Liviya Mendelsohn

  • Liv Mendelsohn, M.A., M.Ed., is former Director of Accessibility and Inclusion at the Miles Nadal Jewish Community Centre and former Artistic Director of the ReelAbilities Film Festival Toronto. She has been a field instructor for the Faculty of Social Work at the University of Toronto, a 2018 Civic Action DiverseCity Fellow, and a 2019 mentor for the Association of Fundraising Professionals (AFP) Fellowship in Inclusion and Philanthropy. Liv is the recipient of a 2019 City of Toronto Equity Award. Liv is currently a member of the City of Toronto’s Accessibility Advisory Committee; the City of Toronto Museums’s Inclusion, Diversity, Equity and Accessibility Committee, and the Civic Re:Action Toronto COVID Recovery Task Force. She is a 2021-2023 Mandel Executive Leadership Program Fellow.

Collaborator and Project Accountability & Care Team

Deirdre Chisholm

  • Deirdre Chisholm is the Executive Director of the Art Gallery of Southwestern Manitoba. With 25 years’ experience in municipal and non-profit cultural institutions, her administrative and artistic practices are rooted in community-based art with a focus on public co-creation.

Collaborator

Michael Orsini

  • Michael is a Full Professor in the Institute of Feminist and Gender Studies and the School of Political Studies at the University of Ottawa. A critical policy scholar, he is interested mainly in foregrounding the perspectives of people marginalized from policy making. His main areas of interest are in health politics and policy, and the role of social movements in policy processes. Michael has completed research in the fields of autism, HIV/AIDS, and on the link between art and disability experience.

Collaborator

Raya Shields

  • Raya Shields has recently completed a Masters’ degree at York University in Critical Disability Studies. Her MA thesis examines the manipulation of space and time in institutional settings. She is Autistic, queer, and multiply neurodivergent. For the last 12 years she has been mentoring autistic children and youth.

Collaborator

Nicholas S. Hodge

  • Nick Hodge is Professor of Inclusive Practice in The Autism Centre, Sheffield Institute of Education, Sheffield Hallam University (SHU), UK. Prior to joining SHU in 1998, Nick was a special education teacher, supporting disabled children and their families in schools for over 15 years. Nick's research interests focus on the attitudinal and structural barriers that lead to disabled children and their parents and carers becoming marginalised, disempowered and excluded within the educational system. 

Collaborator

Gillian Parekh

  • Gillian Parekh is an Assistant Professor and Canada Research Chair in Inclusion, Disability and Education within the Faculty of Education at York. As a previous teacher in special education and research coordinator with the Toronto District School Board (TDSB), Gillian has conducted extensive system and school-based research in Toronto in the areas of structural equity, special education, and academic streaming. In particular, her work explores how schools construct and respond to disability as well as how students are organized across programs and systems.

Co-Investigator

Jake Pyne

  • Jake Pyne is an Assistant Professor at the York University School of Social Work and an activist in the trans community in Toronto. Over the past 18 years, Jake has worked on projects to improve trans community access to shelters and emergency services, health care, and family law justice, as well as projects to build support for gender independent kids and trans youth. Jake is currently studying the intersection of autistic and trans experience and the implications for how humanness is understood.

Collaborator and Project Accountability & Care Team

  • Kendra Gowler is the President of the Student Services Administrators' Association of Manitoba (SSAAM). SSAAM is committed to providing provincial leadership and informed advocacy to support appropriate educational programming for all students.

Collaborator Project Accountability & Care Team

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Patrick Dunlop

  • Patrick Dunlop is a resource teacher and student advisor at a high school in Winnipeg. His passions focus on inclusive education and appropriate programming for all children. He is an advocate for Universal Design for Learning, inquiry-based classrooms, and collaborative environments. He earned a Master of Education degree in Inclusive Education through Brandon University. He is an active member on a provincial UDL committee and has had the pleasure of teaching a university course on child development and inclusive education through the University of British Columbia.

Collaborator

Dorothy Taare-Smith

  • Dorothy Taare-Smith is the founder of Taonga Takiwātanga Charitable Trust. The nature of the trust is to provide professional development and support to Whānau living in high populated Maori communities in Te Tairāwhiti.

    Dorothy has a special focus in Takiwātanga – Autism from a Māori perspective. She has worked in the disability sector for well over 20 years as a teacher-aide, teacher, specialist teacher, advocate and is the nanny of a Mokopuna who is Takiwātanga (on the autism spectrum). Having worked for several years advocating for and supporting children, Whānau (families) and community groups in a wide range of contexts, Dorothy has developed a comprehensive understanding of the New Zealand disability sector.

Collaborator

Vijaya Dharan

  • Vijaya Dharan is a Senior Lecturer at Massey University, New Zealand where she coordinates and teaches postgraduate specialist teacher training in Autism Spectrum Disorder. She is the programme coordinator for the Special and Inclusive Education undergraduate programme. Her research areas are in the fields of inclusive education, ASD, children and young persons with emotional and behavioural difficulties, school engagement of secondary age students and initial teacher education. She is also a registered psychologist with annual practising certificate and a registered teacher.

Collaborator

Jan Hastie

  • Mauao te maunga
    Tauranga te moana
    Taakitimu te Waka
    Huria te Marae
    Ngati Ranginui te Iwi
    Jan Hastie toku ingoa

    Jan Hastie is the programme lead for the Bachelor of Social Work at Toi Ohomai Institute of Technology located in Rotorua, Bay of Plenty, Aotearoa (New Zealand). She is currently completing my PhD on tōnā ano Takiwātanga/Autism through a feminist lens and a decolonising methodology, using art based research methods.

Collaborator

Maximiliano Pierret

  • Maximiliano Pierret is a Lecturer in Neurodiversity and Inclusive Education in the Specialist Teaching Programme, as well as in Postgraduate/Master studies in Inclusive Education at Massey University, New Zealand. He has over 15 years of teaching experience both in mainstream and special education settings.

Collaborator

Tyler Huff

  • Tyler Huff is a Métis Research Assistant with Re•Storying Autism and a teacher.

Research Assistant

Dezarae Bodnar

  • Dezarae Bodnar is a Métis Research Assistant with Re•Storying Autism and student in psychology at Brandon University

Research Assistant

Manitoba Métis Federation SW

  • The Manitoba Métis Federation-Southwest Region (MMF SW) Inc. is a non-profit organization whose primary purpose is to represent and serve the needs of the Métis of the Southwest Region. MMF SW is a project partner collaborating to understand the experiences of Autistic Métis people and their family, kin and communities.

Project Partner

Brandon Friendship Centre

  • Brandon Friendship Centre (BFC) is an urban Indigenous service delivery agency with a mission to provide programs and services to ​all people with an initial emphasis on Indigenous people. BFC is a project partner collaborating with us to understand the experiences of the Autistic individuals, family, kin and communities in the Brandon area they serve.

Project Partner