If you missed Professor Thomas Dixon discussing Prince Harry, the death of Princess Diana in 1997, and the history of the stiff upper lip on 18 April 2017 then you can listen to his segment on the Today progamme website. The discussion was picked up in in a comment piece for The Guardian by Sir Simon Wessely, President of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, on 19 April 2017 and Thomas was quoted in an article about Prince Harry, tears, and the British stiff upper lip in a German national newspaper, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, on 18 April 2017.
Author Archives: helenstark
Mood Shifts: A Sonic Repertoire
“Sounds touch me, and mood is the window of allowance, wide or narrow, to let sound in: my moods are equivalent to what I let myself touch, and be touched by in turn, but also what I have no choice in the matter of being encased in…”
Is it possible to create a poetics of atmosphere as antidote to pre-election and post-Brexit airlessness, moodlessness, and disrepair? Mary Cappello performs a multi-modal reading from her latest collection of essays and experimental prose, Life Breaks In (a mood almanack) with emphasis on sounds and voices as mood generators par excellence. Expect images, music, discussion and unnamed mood shifts. Attendance is free but please register online.
Doors will open at 6pm and the event starts at 6.30. There will be a pay bar.
PopSugar calls Life Breaks In one of 10 books to keep us centred post-election.
Brit+Company places it among “3 books to set your imagination ablaze”
LARB describes it as “time spent in a language-made listening room, a stroll into shifting human emotive time“.
Books will be available for sale and signing. Life Breaks In (Unviersity of Chicago Press) features a colour photo gallery by Rosamond Purcell.
Rhodri Hayward’s article on Busman’s stomach published in ‘Contemporary British History’
Rhodri Hayward’s article on Busman’s stomach, ‘Busman’s stomach and the embodiment of modernity’, has been published in Contemporary British History.
This paper examines the relationship between the gastric illness, ‘busman’s stomach’ and the Coronation bus strike of May 1937 in which 27,000 London busworkers walked out for better working conditions and a seven-and-half-hour day. It explores the way in which new patterns of somatisation, gastroenterological techniques, psychological theories and competing understandings of time worked together to create new political institutions and new forms of political action in inter-war Britain.
You can read it on Contemporary British History‘s website.
Seminar with Allan Young: ‘The advantages of “not-knowing”: the Bayesian brain contemplates a puzzling epidemic of traumatic memory.’
All are welcome to this seminar with Allan Young on March 24, 14.00-16.00. Allan will be giving a talk titled ‘The advantages of “not-knowing”: the Bayesian brain contemplates a puzzling epidemic of traumatic memory.’
Please contact Helen Stark (h.stark@qmul.ac.uk) for a copy of Allan’s powerpoint in advance of the seminar and for any other information.
Spring Newsletter
Find out the Centre’s news in our Spring Newsletter.
Registration now open: Steve Silberman ‘Great Minds Don’t Always Think Alike’
In this public lecture, award-winning science writer and New York Times bestselling author of NeuroTribes, Steve Silberman, will take a deep look at the hidden history of autism and the promise of a future in which everyone is given the support they need to reach their maximum potential. Doors at 6, talk starts 6.30 and will be followed by a wine reception. Attendance is free but please register on Eventbrite.
Steve Silberman is an award-winning science writer whose articles have appeared in Wired, the New Yorker, the MIT Technology Review, Nature, Salon, Shambhala Sun, and many other publications. He is also the author of the New York Timesbest-selling NeuroTribes: The Legacy of Autism and the Future of Neurodiversity, which unearths the secret history of autism, long suppressed by the same clinicians who first became famous for discovering it, while also discovering surprising answers to the crucial question of why the number of diagnoses has soared in recent years. The book received a California Book Award as well as the Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction — the first popular science book to win the prize in its 17-year history. Silberman speaks regularly at schools and universities, advocacy groups and organizations, and corporations including Microsoft, Google, and Apple.
In his book and his keynote presentations, Silberman shares little-known stories of the researchers and psychiatrists who pioneered the first autism diagnoses while also providing long-sought solutions to the autism puzzle. In an effort to shed light on the growing movement of “neurodiversity,” Silberman discusses the evolution of autism and explores the need for a more humane world in which people with learning differences and those who love them have access to the resources they need to live happier, healthier, more secure, and more meaningful lives.
The Victorians are to blame for assumptions that self-harm is just attention-seeking – Sarah Chaney in The Conversation
Find out why the Victorians are to blame for assumptions that self-harm is just attention seeking in Sarah Chaney’s article for The Conversation. This article comes from research from Sarah’s new book Psyche on the Skin.
5 things you didn’t know about self-harm
Read Sarah Chaney’s article, ‘5 things you didn’t know about self-harm’ in Metro. The article draws on Sarah’s new book Psyche on the Skin: A History of Self-Harm
Thomas Dixon responds to psychologist Agnes Moors on emotions
Professor Thomas Dixon is among several emotions researchers from different disciplines offering their responses to an important new article by the psychologist Agnes Moors in the latest issue of Psychological Inquiry. Moors argues that “the emotions” fail to constitute a coherent and scientifically meaningful domain, and puts forward a new sceptical theory. Dixon’s response finds parallels to Moors’s arguments in earlier philosophical theories, and especially in the debate in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries about whether emotions were more like chemical compounds or physical aggregates.
The Globalisation of Autism: Historical, Sociological, and Anthropological Reflections
Registration is now open
The autism diagnosis has become an important category of global health; capable of attracting large amounts of funding, shaping disability rights legislation, and impacting education, health and welfare policies internationally. This symposium will bring together scholars from across the world to reflect on how and why the autism category has achieved such significance in shaping international healthcare, research, and policy interventions, since the middle decades of the twentieth century. It will consider how and why autism became a global category, and what the implications of this are for understanding autism, research networks, and health policy in the future. The symposium will lead to a groundbreaking edited collection on the globalisation of autism for a wide international readership.
The symposium will address questions such as:
- How has the autism diagnosis been employed in different national contexts to ensure education, healthcare and disability rights?
- How have facts about autism travelled, and what impact has travel had on these facts?
- How has the neurodiversity movement arisen in response to the growth of autism diagnoses, and what opportunities and challenges has this movement created internationally?
- How has the autism diagnosis changed ideas about children’s typical emotional development in different national or international contexts?
- What role have the neurosciences played in establishing international models of autism?
- How have the International Classification of Diseases (ICD) and the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) influenced legal, political, medical and research approaches to autism internationally?
- What has been the role of caregivers and other stakeholders in challenging models of autism developed in the scientific literature both nationally and internationally?
The symposium will consider the political dimension of the autism diagnosis, in particular its role in establishing education, health and welfare rights internationally, and its entry into international human rights discourse. It will also consider its role in generating new forms of knowledge and research programmes internationally. It aims to encourage dialogue across countries in order to generate new perspectives on how the autism diagnosis has been integrated into different cultural contexts, and the impact that this has had on models of psychological development and individual identity.
Registration is now open on the QMUL E-shop and costs £30.
Programme
Thursday 20th April
All sessions on Thursday are in Graduate Centre: GC 201 unless otherwise stated.
9-9:30am Arrivals and coffee
9:30-9:45 Welcome and Introduction – Dr Bonnie Evans
9:45-11:05 Anthropology and the Perception of Autism
Chair: Professor Richard Ashcroft (Queen Mary)
Dr Joseph Long (University of Aberdeen/Scottish Autism), ‘Invisible relations and shifting paradigms in UK autism services: Anthropological reflections on social care contexts’
Tyler Zoanni (New York University), ‘Ad-hoc Autism: A diagnosis but not a condition in Uganda’
Dr Mathias Winter (Ecole Normale Supérieure de Lyon), ‘Is France late on autism? Clinical and anthropological stakes of a local resistance to the globalisation of mental health’
11:05-11.25 Coffee Break
11:25-12:45 Neuroscience, Neurodiversity and the Concept of Autism
Chair: Dr Mark Honigsbaum (QMUL)
Dr Des Fitzgerald (Cardiff University), ‘ “There’s this thing we recognise when we see it, and it’s this thing called autism” – uncertainty, ambiguity, and the affective labour of autism neuroscience’
Dr Delphine Jacobs (University of Leuven), ‘The meaning of the concept of autism in parenthood and in the clinic. An investigation in two Belgian diagnostic centres’
Dr Lindsay O’Dell (The Open University, UK),‘ “Neurodiversity and epistemic communities: how the concept has travelled across cultural contexts’
12.45-1.45: Lunch Arts 2: Foyer
Including book launch for Bonnie Evans’ The Metamorphosis of Autism with Professor Thomas Dixon
1.45-3.05 History, Disability, and Individual Rights
Chair: Dr Rhodri Hayward
Dr Bonnie Evans (Queen Mary), ‘Autism, Britain, and the global health movement’
Dr Monika Baár (Leiden University), ‘The position of autism within the disability rights movement: Historical approaches’
Michal Geisler (Charles University, Prague),‘How was the concept of autism imported in the Czech Republic?’
3.05-4.40 Care, Gender, and Changing Global Autisms
Chair: Dr Ayesha Nathoo
Dr Marga Vicedo (University of Toronto), ‘A mother’s Siege: Love and knowledge in understanding autism in the USA’
Dr Leedy Hoque (Acceptance and Understanding Autism, Bangladesh) ‘Autism: A caregiver’s perspective’
Dr Sharon Elley (University of Leeds), ‘ “I am the reasonable adjustments”: autistic women, late diagnosis and workplace challenges’
Dr Catriona Stewart (Scottish Autism) ‘From cygnet to swan: changing outlooks for autistic girls and women’
4.40-4:55 Coffee Break
4:55-6:15 Participation and Engagement in Comparative and International Contexts
Chair: Professor Stuart Murray (University of Leeds)
Dr Damien Milton and Dr Rebecca Wood (University of Birmingham) ‘Beyond tokenism: Autistic participation in a transnational community of practice’
Dr Gregory Hollin (University of Leeds),‘Advocacy in the UK: Psychologists’ reflections on engagement’
Dr Kristien Hens (University of Antwerp), ‘Beyond the diagnosis. A phenomenological study’
6:15-6:30 Break
6:30-7:45 Public Lecture: Steve Silberman (Author of ‘Neurotribes’) “Great Minds Don’t Always Think Alike”, Arts 2 Lecture Theatre
7:45-9pm Drinks Reception (Arts Two Foyer)
Friday 21st April
9:15-9:30 Arrivals
9.30-10:50 International Networks and National Responses Graduate Centre: GC 601
Chair: Professor Richard Ashcroft (Queen Mary)
Professor Jonathyne Briggs (Indiana University Northwest), ‘The response to the international influence in autism treatment in late twentieth century France’
Dr Thomas Jammet and Dr Audrey Linder (University of Health Science/University of Applied Sciences of Western Switzerland), ‘Expertise in tension: “Old” and “new” professionals in French speaking Switzerland’
Lai Pin Yu (National Yang Ming University, Taiwan),‘Autism history in Taiwan 1970-1990’
10.50-11.10: Coffee Break [Graduate Centre]
11.10-12.30 Globalisation and Local Challenges: Focus on Africa Graduate Centre: GC 601
Chair: Professor Megan Vaughan (UCL)
Dr Amanda Martinage (Iona College, New York), ‘Reflections on the delivery of autism awareness and education trainings in Tanzania’
Dr Ilona Roth (Open University, UK), ‘Challenges and agents for change in the globalisation of autism: a case study of Ethiopia’
Irene Abimbola Adio (Oluyole Cheshire Home, Nigeria), ‘Challenges of raising a child with autism in Africa’
12.30-1.30 Lunch Arts 2: Foyer
Including display of artwork by Aadil Hoque
1.30-2.50
PARALLEL SESSION 1:
Graduate Centre: GC 601
Science, Technology, Cinema, and Creativity
Chair: TBC
Dr Kathleen Richardson (De Montfort University), ‘The robot intermediary? An anthropology of attachment and robots for children with autism’
Leni Van Goidsenhoven (University of Leuven), ‘Imaging autism: emerging knowledge in creative workshops for people on the spectrum in Belgium’
Dr Steven Eastwood (Queen Mary), ‘Cinemautism’
PARALLEL SESSION 2:
Graduate Centre: GC 603
Globalisation, Identity, and Treatment
Chair: TBC
Steven Kapp (University of Exeter), ‘Autism diagnosis across the globe: DSM-5 as a Focal Point’
Nabila Puspakesuma (King’s College, London), ‘Autism in Indonesia’
Vered Seidmann (Nanyang University, Singapore), ‘Agency, identity and the self –autistic identity construction in the blogosphere’
Patrick Kirkham (Independent Scholar, MPhil Cambridge University), ‘Applied Behaviour Analysis – a global ‘Gold Standard’ of autism treatment?’
2:50-3:10: Coffee Break
3:10-4:40pm Autism: New Global Challenges Graduate Centre: GC 601
Chair: Dr Ginny Russell (Exeter)
Professor Francisco Ortega (Rio de Janeiro State University), ‘The biopolitics of autism in Brazil’
Professor Ilina Singh (University of Oxford), ‘Globalisation of autism genomics research: Promises and perils’
Professor Bhismadev Chakrabarti (University of Reading), ‘A neuroscientist studies autism in India: Challenges and considerations’
4:40-5:30 Autism: New Global Challenges: Roundtable and Discussion Graduate Suite: GC 601
Graduate Centre is building 18 on the campus map. Mile End campus is easily accessible on the Central, Hammersmith&City and District lines.