Neurodiversity Celebration Week 2025

The University of Exeter is celebrating neurodiversity!

On 17 to 23 March 2025, for the fourth year running the University of Exeter is participating in Neurodiversity Celebration Week. This week is a celebration of neurodivergent staff and students, their work and how they can use what they do to understand their own neurodivergence and support others.

“Neurodiversity” means variations in cognitive functioning. The neurotypes people usually think of first are ADHD, Autism and Dyslexia. But it can also include many other conditions such as Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, Dyspraxia, Schizophrenia, Tourette’s and many others. It can also include conditions acquired at a certain point in your life, like brain injury. This means that the neurodiversity umbrella covers people who relate to their neurodivergence in a variety of ways – from needing urgent medical treatment to not viewing it as a disability at all.

Our information on Support for Disabled Staff

Occupational Health and Equality Diversity and Inclusion Support - Working with disability | Occupational Health | University of Exeter, Disability Equality Support.

Information for managers Information for Managers | Occupational Health | University of Exeter

Do I need a diagnosis to be neurodivergent?

You do not need a diagnosis to consider yourself neurodivergent or to get help. There are a few reasons for this:

Waiting lists – Waiting lists to be diagnosed on the NHS are currently years long, and requiring people to go through this process before they can identify as neurodivergent limits their ability to adopt helpful coping strategies.
Student and staff satisfaction – With some waiting lists for diagnosis longer than university courses, students could easily go through their entire time at university without a diagnosis. To support students and staff, adjustments should be offered as standard as part of work. For example, a workplace could allow staff to wear noise cancelling headphones if they find noise distracting rather than make a specific exemption to the rule against them for neurodivergent staff.
Equality – Race and gender can influence whether a person gets diagnosed, with diagnostic bias favouring white males. Some minoritised groups, like trans people, may feel unwilling to seek a diagnosis due to a perception that this could mean their views are taken less seriously in medical contexts. Therefore rejecting self-id disproportionately impacts marginalised groups.
Legal - You’re considered disabled under the Equality Act 2010 if you have a physical or mental impairment that has a ‘substantial’ and ‘long-term’ negative effect on your ability to do normal daily activities. This means that if a person can provide medical evidence of substantial long-term need for treatment, they may be legally considered as disabled even without a diagnosis.
Personal – Many neurodivergent people feel reluctant to put adjustments in place for themselves or make allowances for themselves without a diagnosis, but many neurodiversity strategies can be implemented without specialised medical help and having some understanding of yourself can be a step towards that.

For full details of events, resources and support being promoted for Neurodiversity Celebration Week, please click on the tabs below

Events

Body Doubling Session

Monday 17th March, 14:00-15:30
Friday, 21 March,14:00-15:30
Online via Teams

We run regular body doubling sessions online, where we work together and provide accountability and support to help us focus through the day. Come and join us! More information about Body Doubling is in the next tab.

Confidently Unmasked Workshop (The Students' Union)

Tuesday 18 March, 1 - 3pm
Daphne du Maurier Seminar K, Penryn Campus
Event information

This 45-minute workshop is designed to give you an understanding of how your deeply ingrained thoughts impact your confidence and actions, relating this to how you and society have viewed your neurodivergence and the impact that this has had on your confidence and mental health. We will explore as a group the way that your unique brand of neurodivergence has impacted how you show up in the world and consider ways to embrace your unique skillsets and start changing the narrative into one of positivity and empowerment.

This event is free to attend, but please log in to reserve a space!

All Staff Community Cafe

Tuesday 18 March, 1 - 2pm
Upper Stannary, Penryn Campus

All staff are invited to join our collaborative community cafe to celebrate Neurodiversity Celebration Week! Grab a hot drink, biscuit and mingle.

Keynote Speaker: Jason Arday

Wednesday 19th March, 5:30pm-7pm
The Alumni Auditorium, The Forum, Streatham Campus, Exeter; or join us online via Teams

Our keynote speaker for Neurodiversity Celebration Week will be Jason Arday. Jason is the youngest ever Black professor at Cambridge where he is the Professor of the Sociology of Education. Professor Arday’s research focuses on the areas of race and higher education, intersectionality and education, mental health and education, neurodiversity and cultural studies. At a young age Jason was diagnosed as autistic. He didn’t speak until he was 11 and couldn’t read or write until the age of 18, and this has influenced his remarkable career as an educator, researcher, and a philanthropist who has raised over £5 million for charity. Jason will be sharing his thoughts on Higher Education, academics and the intersections of race and neurodiversity.

This event is open to all, and tickets are available to attend in person or online.

More information and free ticket registration via Eventbrite.

Guest speaker: Marie Hutchinson-Ralph

Thursday 20th March, 4 - 5pm
The Students' Union, Penryn Campus

Join The Students' Union the Neurodivergent and Disabled Students’ Collective for a talk and discussion with Marie Hutchinson-Ralph, Director at Creative Neurodivergent and Founder of The Autistic Community of Cornwall and Youth Art Connect.

Body Doubling Session

Monday 21st March, 14:00-15:30
Online via Teams

Under the Umbrella - Activity Event

Monday 24th March, 10:00-12:00
The Creative Quadrant
No sign up required, just drop by at the Creative Quadrant to join in!

Imagine yourself as a 10 year old child. You’ve had a great weekend and you get to school on Monday morning, excited to tell your best friend about what you’ve been up to. However, your best friend is off sick and you don’t know who to talk to. All of your other classmates are chatting about a Birthday party that they went to at the weekend, but you weren’t invited. After waiting for what feels like a lifetime, the bell rings for you to head inside and start the school day…

A range of activities will be available for you to try, all of which are designed to replicate part of the school day. There might be some unexpected twists throughout which help to show some of the challenges that are a neurodivergent child might experience. Try putting on a set of headphones and experience what listening for your name in the register might feel like if you were hypersensitive to everyday sounds, playing a game when the rules seem to keep changing, try your hand at competing against our volunteers in a short obstacle course, or searching through over 1000 thoughts that might be in your head to find one thing that you want to say.

You can expect space hoppers, ball pits, and board games as part of this fun yet thought provoking set of activities!

Neurodiversity Cafe Social

Monday 24th March, 12:30-13:30
The Creative Quadrant

The Neurodiversity Cafe meets monthly online for socials and regularly for body doubling. Join us for a special in person event at the Creative Quadrant! You are welcome to bring your lunch with you or to come along and just enjoy being with the group.

Contact Sian Robinson (s.robinson6@exeter.ac.uk) with any questions.

Celebration of Neurodiversity InnoPlay Playful Session

Monday 24th March, 14:00-16:00
The Creative Quadrant

Neurodivergent colleagues and students are invited to join some of the Neurodiversity Cafe members and INNOPLAY faculty for an immersive and playful workshop to celebrate our neurodivergence.

During this two-hour immersive playful workshop, there will be a range of activities to explore, share, and reflect upon how our neurodivergence positively impacts our lives and how we can use that for our future selves, both individually and as a group.

This is not to downplay the oftentimes struggles of being neurodivergent in a neurotypical world, instead, it is a space to take a moment to focus on the good and unique aspects of being neurodivergent that makes us who we are.

This is an immersive workshop including music, sharing and reflecting on feelings and emotions - please take care of yourself and be kind to yourself and others.

This is for neurodivergent individuals due to the nature of the workshop including personal reflections on being neurodivergent, therefore this is for anyone that identifies as neurodivergent, there is no requirement for a diagnosis.
This session is in person due to the interactive, immersive and hands-on nature of the activities.

We All Exist in the Future: Imagining our Collective Liberation

POSTPONED: New Date to be confirmed!
The Multifaith Centre

All are welcome to join Umutima, a second-year doctoral student in creative writing for this interactive workshop.

Black disabled (including neuroexpansive), non-yet-disabled, queer, and trans femme activists, scholars, culture/liberation workers, and everyday folks have been actively calling and working towards collective liberation for centuries now.

Blackness-birthed or grounded and informed movements are a call to end all violences (environmental, societal, relational, etc.) and build a liberated world where the Land, more than humans, and humans can co-live without ever oppressing each other again and can care for each other.

Now that the world is truly on fire for many globally, many of us (including those who have historically had the luxury of not caring for actually collective liberation) are actively trying to figure out what collective liberation can look like in practice. We are trying to figure out what roles we can play according to our various abilities to bring forward this liberation for all.

In this interactive workshop, Umutima will use their creative research on body-dreaming collective liberation to challenge and encourage us to think more expansively about our respective roles and relational accountabilities to each other as disabled and non-yet-disabled people.

Please come ready (with notepads/journals and pens) to engage with each other.

The workshop will be in person only, and not be recorded to give space to everyone attending to engage authentically with the topics at hand.

The event will last 2 hours with a break after the first hour.

The event is universally designed (i.e. disability inclusive): You are absolutely welcomed to bring food, water, hot drinks with you and take care of your bodies during the workshop. If you need to take medication, take comfort breaks, or move your bodies during the workshop, feel free to do so.

If you don’t already have your own mask, masks will be available on arrival for those who are able to wear them. Umutima will only unmask when facilitating the workshop and answering the attendees’ questions.

More information and free ticket registration via Eventbrite.

Past event recordings

Not all previous events have been recorded as it depends on the wishes of the speaker and what audience questions may be like, but below are our available recordings from previous years:

2022

2023

Find out more about the launch of our new Neurodiversity Cafe

The Neurodiversity Café is a social group that is open to any staff member or PGR student who identifies as neurodivergent – we use Nick Walker’s definition of neurodivergence (NEURODIVERSITY: SOME BASIC TERMS & DEFINITIONS • NEUROQUEER).

The Café’s aims to create a neurodivergent-led, confidential and supportive space to meet regularly to talk about things that matter to us. We will also set up a private Teams channel to have a space for informal chat.

The Café holds monthly online meetups and termly in-person socials. We also run weekly body doubling sessions. Body doubling is a form of focused working where we sit together online and commit to focused work in a supportive and non-judgmental environment. Sessions run Mondays and alternating Wednesdays and Fridays.

To receive information about the Neurodiversity Café and register for our regular monthly socials and body doubling sessions, please fill in this Microsoft Form.

ADHD Babes

If you would like your reflections on being Neurodivergent at Exeter added to our website, please email EDI@exeter.ac.uk

This year we are accepting reflections in any formats – pictures, stories, career profiles, or anything else you’d like to tell us about neurodiversity in Exeter.

Reflections from previous years

2022, 2023, 2024