Welcome to Autism@Manchester’s winter round up, reflecting on our autumn activities as we look forward to the new semester.

Toolkit project 

I’ve been continuing my role as co-production officer and research associate thanks to support from the NIHR Three School’s Mental Health PPIE funding. This is allowing autistic individuals to evaluate our Autism@Manchester Research Involvement Toolkit. We are also exploring the suitability of the toolkit materials for allistic people with mild to moderate mental health conditions who are interested in research. This project is led by Dr Kelly Birtwell, Research Fellow with the School for Primary Care at The University of Manchester and Professor Emma Gowen at the School of Health Sciences, University of Manchester in partnership with Dr Alice Dunning (and previously Dr Helen Quirk) at the School of Medicine and Population Health, University of Sheffield. 

During 2024 – 2025, we developed a four-module Autism@Manchester Research Involvement Toolkit aimed at supporting people who would like to get involved with research either as participants (volunteering to take part in research project) or as advisors (through Patient and Public Involvement and Engagement). I’ve been continuing to work with Professor Emma Gowen, doctoral student, Elizaveta Nosova, and Matthew Jackson from the University Library’s e-learning team to integrate suggestions from autistic advisors into the Toolkit. Once the evaluation process of this is complete, we look forward to sharing this free online resource with you soon. 

Café Autistique 

On 3 December we held a Café Autistique event at the Contact Theatre with talks from Niamh Farrell and Busra Besdere, PhD students here at The University of Manchester. If you missed the live event, you can find slides, audio and video recordings here: Café Autistíque | University of Manchester. Talks last around 15 minutes at these events, allowing plenty of time for questions from the audience (please note, questions aren’t recorded). All are welcome to these events, but we especially encourage autistic people to join us. You can watch a short reel made by Aahana Singh on our Instagram page to get an idea of how these events work. 

Niamh Farrell discussed her findings from interviews with autistic transgender individuals, who reflected on barriers they face day to day. This included the experiences of people who felt that they had to hide their autistic identity to receive appropriate gender clinic care due to prejudice.  

Busra Besdere also used interviews and analysis of qualitative data in their talk, which explored primary school teachers’ views around supporting the mental health of autistic students in schools. Teacher’s lived experience of supporting autistic pupils showed a range of knowledge and various strategies but also indicated that teachers wish to receive more specific training on supporting mental health. 

I look forward to reading their dissertations and publications in the future.

‘Bee Merry’ was spotted in Albert Square in December. Christmas may be over, but we’re here for festive puns.

Other news

Looking forward to this semester, Professor Emma Gowen and Dr Amber Ruigrok are launching a new autism unit for 2nd year Psychology undergraduate students. The unit is co-produced and co-delivered with autistic people and Emma and Amber would like to express their thanks to those that have contributed.  

With the help of our second-year intern, Matthew Kasper, I’m pulling together news from our colleagues and partners for the Winter newsletter. Watch this space for more research and teaching updates next month. 

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