AutINSAR is an online and in-person discussion about autistic priorities in autism research. It began at the 2017 INSAR International Society for Autism Research meeting in San Francisco, as a frustrated community response to INSAR’s chronic neglect of existing autistic priorities and needs. Thinking Person’s Guide to Autism now co-hosts the AutINSAR chat each time we attend the INSAR annual meeting, this year in Prague, Czech Republic.

We’re grateful to everyone who participated in this year’s particularly rich and deep AutINSAR discussion, as while autistic interests and autistic researchers are increasingly present at INSAR, they are still not fully centered. And a reminder to autism researchers: If you are wondering what kind of research can help existing rather than theoretical autistic people, AutINSAR contains a wealth of ideas.

This year’s in-person attendees were  Thinking Person’s Guide to Autism editors Shannon Rosa and Carol Greenburg, John Marble of Pivot Neurodiversity, Kayden Stockwell of the University of Virginia, Michelle Dodd of Nottingham Trent University, Jamie Chase of the University of Washington, independent researcher Aimée Fletcher. From the Centre for Autism Research and Education at University College London, we had Brian Irvine, Mel Romualdez, Fae Burrell, Hannah Fry, and Louie Plumb.

And now to the eight AutINSAR questions. We had less than an hour to answer them, but people also answered on Bluesky or Facebook in their own time—an especially important accommodation this year, as in Prague we were a minimum of six time zones ahead of North Americans.

Q1: What are your top three priorities for autism research?

Jamie Chase: Center autistic voices and epistemologies. More research on autistic communication, including spoken and non-spoken language.

Carol Greenburg: Research on how can we best support the people who use AAC as primary forms of communication and the people who support them.

Hannah Fry: Looking at ways to make the environment fit the autistic experience rather than than the opposite.

Aimée Fletcher ‪@aimeespeaks.bsky.social‬:

1. Enabling Autistic people with high support needs to access their human rights and be supported to make own informed life decisions
2. Mental wellbeing and how to support people to thrive (moving beyond autistic people = bad MH to how we can improve this)
3. Interdisciplinary/Humanities approaches

Brian Irvine: Some autINSAR calls for more research in:

• Participatory epistemologies
• Varieties of communication
• Community AAC approaches
• Ways to change the environment to be a better fit for all
• Passion & joy
• Intimacy & enjoyment
• Consent (and consent for touch)

Steven Kapp @drstevenkapp.bsky.social: My top three priorities for autism research are:

1. Investigate reliable communication for nonspeaking autistic people
2. Identify which services for who and how (in terms of dissemination) are effective in supporting quality of life
3. Improving well-being for all autistic people

‪Dr Katie Twomey‬‪ @k2mey.bsky.social‬, an autistic language researcher

• Understanding how we process and produce language.
• Is autistic language processing different to non autistic language processing?
• What triggers shutdowns?
• To what extent is autistic language processing affected by sensory stimuli?

Emily Paige Ballou‬ ‪@epballou.bsky.social‬, autistic writer/blogger, formerly a social media moderator with AWN, advisory board member of NJACE, co-editor of “Sincerely, Your Autistic Child,” and currently serving on the editorial board of OUGHT: The Journal of Autistic Culture. I’m also an AEA stage manager:
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Yeah, I feel like our language development has to be affected by the fact that our whole frame of reference on the world is different from a sensorimotor standpoint. Not to mention the incredible coordination that speech requires.‬ ‪But this really needs more exploration.‬

‪Chronic Historian ♾️🦓♿️🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️💜🖤💛🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🍉🐺🐈‍⬛🧑‍🌾🌱🌳‬ ‪@enbycriphistorian.bsky.social‬

1. What are the most effective actions governments can fund to help autistic adults access work sustainably, effectively and happily (not be forced into short term work that destroys our physical and mental health from which we are sacked for not behaving like NTs).
2. What the most effective actions govts can fund to improve lifelong healthcare outcomes for autistic children and adults, encompassing both physical and mental healthcare
3. Research into treatments to help autistic people manage the most distressing symptoms many of us experience; impulses to self-injure, obsessive.

Also, following thought and behavioural spirals we can’t break out of, sensory oversensitivity, executive dysfunction, many many others

Dena Newman Gassner

• Employment supports for persons over 30.
• Ensuring that the percentage of INSAR acceptances reflect the ratio of 75/25 which more accurately represents the prevalence of low to high support needs.
• Increase in focus on policies that shorten life span or reduce quality of life.

lux ‪@eluxon.bsky.social‬: Developing diagnostic criteria that:

1. Assess autistic people’s own lived experiences, rather than inconveniences allistic people think they face when interacting with autistic people
2. Reflect women’s experiences as autistic people, not just men’s experiences

Emily Paige Ballou‬ ‪@epballou.bsky.social‬

1. What underlies inertia/starting & stopping/transitioning challenges? This seems very basic and yet I do not see a lot of research on it.
2. Overall quality of life issues.

Solveig ⚧ – Autistic Acceptance Worldwide @autisticb4mmr.bsky.social‬: I’d like to see more research focusing on autistic women on Boomer/GenX generations. Not focusing on how they parent us. Focusing instead on what their life was like in school. Were they bullied by classmates? Teachers? Did they have unmet needs? No accommodations?

‪Lucila Guerrero ♾️⚜️🍁‬ ‪@lucila-guerrero.bsky.social‬, an autistic person, peer support worker, and participatory research collaborator (inclusion, factors that impact mental health, and peer support). I collaborated on three posters at INSAR 2026.😊 I will answer some questions. I write in French and I am using automated translation.

1. The roots of social exclusion of autistic people (stigmatization, neuronormativity, etc) as factors underlying suicidality, complex trauma and inequalities in access.
2. Alternative means of access to education and employment.
3. Peer support by and for autistic people.

Q2: Which topics do Autistic people discuss that are missing from research conversations?

John Marble: I’ve yet to see any serious research into why we love trains.

Mel Romualdez: More investigation into passionate interests, outside of DSM-5 side-eyeing and stigmatizing them.

Jamie Chase: Acknowledging that we are not anti-medicine.

Carol Greenburg: Would like to take the term “medical model” and replace it with “pathologizing,” as medical needs are legitimated, nothing wrong with the medical dimension. Then we can talk about how medical approaches can help.

Michelle Dodd:We’re seeing more about romantic relationships, But what about when those relationships end, how about handling breakups?

Fae Burrell: Autistics in their 20s, we talk about how different sexual intimacy is. But by researchers, we are infantilized.

Shannon Rosa: #AutisticsFuck is a hashtag for a reason.

Jamie Chase: So much BDSM in the autistic community, because clarity and permission and boundaries and affirmative consent, are basically built for autistics.

Fae Burrell: We need enjoyment, but we also need consent.

Jamie Chase: Autistic children are taught the opposite of consent, are taught their boundaries don’t matter. This increases their chances of sexual assault.

Shannon Rosa: I worry that we often don’t know what autistic children’s or adults’ true personalities are, because those who have been in ABA therapy are conditioned to be compliant.

Hannah Fry: We need to look at feelings of belonging rather than unbelonging, who your friends are. Look at the positive sides.

John Marble: I think that’s a huge area to research and explore, inter-(NT/autistic) as well as intra-autistic relationships. More research into autistic relationship with abuse and exploitation, in work and friendships. He has heard lots of anecdotes, not as much research.

Carol Greenburg: Boundaries in general, boundaries are not just for sex, her own boundaries are consistently ignored. How to set boundaries.

Jamie Chase: I didn’t learn how to set boundaries until after my autism diagnosis. Hannah Fry agrees.

Mel Romualdez: Autistic kids are taught that they’ll be bullied if they don’t say yes to their friends. This is ingrained from an early age. They become really vulnerable in relationships.

Steven Kapp @drstevenkapp.bsky.social‬: An issue autistic ppl discuss largely missing from research conversations is abuse, which disproportionately affects us. Neglected & abused children are more likely to meet criteria for autism but sometimes it is described as “quasi-autism” in part because of unjust parent-blaming era.

Louie Plumb: There’s not a lot of support for autistics giving testimony with police. When police say “tell me everything” and you don’t have support to let you know what is OK to say and not, they are aggressive and make you question your own experiences. This is practical support that is needed.

He also thinks people struggle to set boundaries, because if they say no they won’t be believed and they’ll be in physical danger.

‪Dr Katie Twomey‬ @k2mey.bsky.social‬: strength and immediacy of autistic friendships.

Lori Hogencamp: Bandwidth. The daily experience of regulatory capacity as a finite, depletable, environment-dependent resource is something we constantly describe, and the research literature still largely doesn’t have a language for it.

Energy budgets, recovery time, environments that drain versus environments that restore, the cost of masking measured in days afterward. None of this maps cleanly onto current categories of stress, fatigue, or autistic burnout as currently defined. What’s missing is a model of mismatch as a chronic condition rather than an episodic event, and recovery as something real and measurable rather than self-report noise. The community already has the construct. The literature needs to catch up.

‪voids bunny 🏳️‍⚧️‬ @voidsbunny.bsky.social‬: Many studies that breakdown results by gender refuse to acknowledge that a significant percentage of autistic people are under the non-binary umbrella. Even many autistic cis people are ambivalent or detached from their gender.

Yet autigender is under-researched while simultaneously being an ongoing topic of discussion within the autistic community.

Dr. Alyssa (they/them)‬ ‪@yesthattoo.bsky.social‬: AND so many say they are breaking down by gender but are actually breaking down by sex assigned at birth, not even handling binary trans people’s Actual Dang Genders.

Dena Newman Gassner: lack of systems navigation support. Particularly when one must coordinate with multiple agencies for survival. And the low incomes below poverty lines once income happens. Loss of supports with even low wage jobs. Blind persons maintain support after employment. We do not.

‪theangryautistics.bsky.social‬ @theangryautistics.bsky.social‬: I mean, almost no real research is being done about autistic people now, so all of them. The main focus for most researchers should be the full removal of any pathologization from anything that’s supposed to science led, including the end of calling the autistic CPTSD diagnosis an “autism” diagnosis in the first place.

‪Solveig ⚧ – Autistic Acceptance Worldwide‬ ‪@autisticb4mmr.bsky.social‬: Maybe I’d like to see more done with respect to autistic culture… from a non-clinical standpoint. I think I’ve seen more of that kind of approach from Dr. Damian Milton though… and that’s been really helpful.

Q3: What concerns do you have about the directions in which autism research is headed, based on work presented at INSAR 2026, or in general? What current research do you find most intriguing?

Jamie Chase: Profound autism bullshit is very worrisome.

John Marble: Autism subtyping pushing is also worrisome.

Brian Irvine: Dividing up into groups is a perfect way to destroy solidarity.

John Marble: I am a patriot, but I think not having INSAR in the US for the next few years is a positive step. The profound and pathological models tend to come from US researchers, and having other countries host INSAR can balance and shift priorities.

Fae Burrell: Yesterday she went to a panel talking about autistic perspectives on genetic research. She is worried about pressure to abort autistic children—with the understanding that there’s a difference between having an abortion because you can’t have a child in your life at that time, and aborting child because they are autistic. The latter is eugenics.

Jamie Chase: Would love to continue to see more autistic researchers doing keynotes.

Fae Burrell: And not all white people, either.

Michelle Dodd: More nothing about us without us. Because autistic people can help you.

‪Dr Aimée Fletcher (@aimee_speaks)‬ ‪@aimeespeaks.bsky.social‬: Concerns are about the silos in research, decrease in funding (particularly for qual/autistic led research) & I fear that academia/research is becoming more of a challenging & hostile space for ND people. Lots of ND researchers unemployed, unfunded & working for free due to commitment to progress.

Lori Hogencamp: My concern is that biotyping, for all its promise, may reproduce the deficit model at higher resolution. As physiological clustering gets more sophisticated, network dynamics, multisystem biomarkers, metabolic signatures, there’s a real risk that architectural variation gets redescribed as finer subtypes of disorder rather than recognized as heterogeneous regulatory designs. The data themselves don’t settle this; they’re interpretive choices made inside background assumptions about what counts as normative architecture. If those assumptions go unexamined, increased measurement sophistication just produces a more granular taxonomy of perceived defect. That would be a missed turn at exactly the moment the tools are getting good enough to support a different model.

Steven Kapp @drstevenkapp.bsky.social: I am concerned that researchers are trying to force “profound autism,” even over the objections of nonspeaking autistic people and in the absence of valid, well-replicated subtypes. That said, I hope research can help all autistic people gain or enjoy reliable access to communication.

Emily Paige Ballou‬ ‪@epballou.bsky.social‬: More in terms of general conversations/discourse about autism, but I think the addition of the support needs levels to the DSM has set us back years in terms of understanding what autism actually is and what makes it disabling.

Solveig ⚧ – Autistic Acceptance Worldwide ‪@autisticb4mmr.bsky.social‬: I say this as someone with a masters degree..

Autistic research cannot be exclusively published in ways that are only accessible to other autistic researchers. Like paywalls, access to academic journals.

But it is it written in plain language? Is autism research published in plain enough language for autistics who aren’t in academia to understand what’s going on?

Are the results of this research published in places we frequent? Do researchers regularly talk to us about these things?

As someone who has spent time in academia, it’s VERY EASY to get yourself walled into a small community of only other academics. It’s very easy to get so wrapped up in things like technical jargon. But research needs to be accessible to us, too!

My final comment on this is… how accessible is it for autistic community members who want to become involved in research? Like, for instance, if I were to pursue a second masters degree with focus on autism research?

What does that look like? Who will mentor me?

Is there scholarship available for autistics who want to become involved in autism research? There absolutely needs to be. We need to be represented in the communities doing the research. And will we get needed accommodations so we have a chance to thrive?

Q4: Researchers: How do you think your research (or another researcher’s work) will improve the lives of Autistic people who are already here—as opposed to autistic people in future generations?

Fae Burrell: Works in the courts, with autistic witnesses and barriers to accessing the court system. This isimportant because they are developing a model of change, and a resource bank.

Hannah Fry: The fact that there is so much more autistic research in general, so much hope. We need more of that, if people not in academia could see that, it would be internally validating.

Michelle Dodd: Good work going on in accessibility in museums etc., for example by independent researcher Aimée Fletcher—but people like her need more support, especially as she is an autistic researcher.

‪Dr Aimée Fletcher (@aimee_speaks)‬ @aimeespeaks.bsky.social‬: Yes – but only if there is funding available to enable us to meaningfully develop the work for audiences beyond academia. My research on museums & cultural heritage could be sector-changing if it could be published in a toolkit, but to do that funding is needed to pay ND collaborators & designers.

Fae Burrell: Monique Botha is doing great work about quality of life outside the neuronormative scale.

Jamie Chase: Love seeing the double empathy problem become a whole field. Wants to change educational and other systems deciding what communication matters.

Brian Irving: Building of the mindspace model as opposed to theory of mind by Geoff Bird, CRAE.

John Marble: Some researchers want spaces and times allotted to discuss practical benefits of their research.

Carol Greenburg: Yes, but those spaces are not autistic-friendly.

Jamie Chase: Has heard that people would like one whole day of INSAR to be all-autistic perspectives—before any other perspectives get presented.

Hannah Fry: Something else for immediate impact: The social validity of research needs to be forefronted and not just mentioned in the after discussion. Interventions could have a better wider impact if social validity was considered first. For Children and adults.

Carol Greenburg: We are hearing more about quality of life (QoL) which is great, but we need to be sure we are getting autistic not caregiver insights about that QoL. Including from nonspeakers.

Shannon Rosa: I see very little about the QoL of nonspeakers and AAC users. People need to read Grant Blasko’s paper on the mental health and isolation of AAC users, the need for connection with peers and mentors. We need more research in this area.

Mel Romualdez: Blew peoples’ minds in asking people with LD to interview political figures. Changes the power dynamic.

‪Chris Gunter 🧬‬ @girlscientist.bsky.social‬: We study genetic literacy, or the ability to apply your understanding of genetics as needed. SPARK participants had *higher* genetic literacy than a general sample. I hope this will improve interactions btwn clinicians/researchers and the autistic people they interact with now!

Q5: Which co-occurring conditions need more research attention, and why? Are there any conditions once considered co-occurring that you now see as intrinsic to autism, and if so why?

Michelle Dodd: Dyspraxia, interoception, very common for autistic people. Integral or co-occuring. Carol Greenburg agrees.

Fae Burrell: Hypermobility as well. Also embodiment, pain looks very different for us, how our emotions and sensory experience manifest in our body.

Brian Irvine: Alexithymia.

Jamie Chase: How alexithymia and interoception are interrelated.

Carol Greenburg: Has been hearing about “distinct anxiety.” Autistic anxiety is fundamentally different. Based on something evident in our lives being different. CBT doesn’t work for autistics because differentiating between real and unreal threats is very different for the autistic experience. For instance if you are always walking into poles then you have anxiety about new spaces. Autistics can catastrophize things that non-autistics don’t notice or believe.

John Marble: Would like to see more research on trauma in autistic experiences, so many baked-in assumptions

Jamie Chase: It’s not paranoia if there really its a demon about to eat your face. Anticipatory anxiety is predictive.

Louie Plumb: Dyscalculia. More related to how we fail to teach autistic people correctly.

John Marble: Yes. He was failing algebra when taught the way his teacher instructed it, so he created and taught himself his own math style—which worked! But then the teacher got mad and made him do it the “right” way, and his math grades plummeted again.

‪Steven Kapp‬ ‪@drstevenkapp.bsky.social‬: Catatonia in autistic people needs more research attention. When malignant it can be deadly. How can it be validly, accessibly assessed in community? To what extent is it connected to autistic people’s movement difficulties or autistic inertia, or stress? What are effective treatments?

Lori Hogenkamp: What I want more research on is the assumption baked into the word “comorbid” itself. Autonomic dysregulation, immune patterns, metabolic differences, sleep architecture, interoceptive variation—these are usually treated as separate conditions that happen to cluster with autistic profiles. From a systems perspective, much of this looks less like clustering and more like the same regulatory architecture being visible in multiple subsystems at once. Which means treating them as separate problems for separate specialists may be missing what they actually are: one design under load, showing up wherever you look.

Autistic people have been describing this in our own language for years , everything is connected, please stop fragmenting me. The research model is finally getting the tools to catch up; the framing should too.

Dena Newman Gassner: Ehlers Danlos and menopause.

Emily Paige Ballou @epballou.bsky.social‬: Not co-occurring conditions exactly, but I think autism is probably more closely related to other movement-related disabilities like Tourette’s & Parkinson’s than we talk about much. I think movement-related aspects of autism need much more clinician & research attention.

Rabbi Ruti Regan @rutiregan.bsky.social‬: I agree with this. The “restrictive and repetitive behaviors” category gets used to refer to a lot of things that I think would be more accurately understood as movement differences and movement disorders.

Emily Paige Ballou @epballou.bsky.social: And also strategies for mitigating movement difficulties. I think not all but a lot of what stimming is, is assistive in enabling larger movements.

Rabbi Ruti Regan @rutiregan.bsky.social: Yeah that sounds right to me. And, sometimes, stopping otherwise-uncontrollable large movements.

sa-ləd ˈtȯŋz ‪@saladtongs.bsky.social: It’s gotta be gut issues.

‪Urgo, confused and needing cake…‬‪@urgocakelord.bsky.social‬: IBD & ADHD with Autism. Genuinely, my Gastro doc could only find the same studies & info as me re: whether melatonin would properly naff up my Crohn’s. Helpfully, the 2 main studies disagreed. 🙄One was ancient & 👎, the other modern & 👍 – but only tested on rats. These are common conditions!🤷

Emily Paige Ballou @epballou.bsky.social‬: Autism isn’t a pathology unto itself, and yet it co-occurs with a whole constellation of other health conditions and challenges—some of which are life-threatening—at highly disproportionate rates. Understanding the relationship b/w these things is crucial to improving our quality of life.

Even if you were to believe that autism doesn’t inherently impose any impairments or health challenges (and I don’t believe that), it’s highly stigmatized, and the stigma itself imposes health and quality of life consequences.

The top three causes of death for autistic people are epilepsy, heart disease, and suicide. We deserve better care and better prevention than what we’re getting.

‪Solveig ⚧ – Autistic Acceptance Worldwide‬ @autisticb4mmr.bsky:‬ Acid reflux and autism came up at some point, and I’m definitely curious what kind of connections there are.

And sensory questions related to dental care.

Plus, since there seems to be a connection between connective tissue disorders and autism, TMJ disorder?

Sam 🐩’Rama ‪@samorama.bsky.social‬: MCAS (Mast Cell Activation Syndrome).

Maya Singh ‪@mkrspm.bsky.social‬: highlighted: Clinician Guide: Constellation of Chronic Medical Conditions Commonly Seen in Autistic & ADHD Adults.

Q6: What are some concerns of historically ignored autistic community members that still don’t get enough research attention?

John Marble: Wants to see more numbers.

Carol Greenburg: Problematic treatment of Black pain in medical settings, compounded by being autistic. How much though?

Mel Romualdez suggests reading David Moore’s research on autistic pain. But not sure if it’s intersectional. Also women are taken less seriously. So are Trans and Gender Diverse people.

Fae Burrell: Wants more people to talk about Murray’s monotropism. Too many contemporary researchers don’t even know what the word means.

John Marble: Has been able to see how much trauma there was for previous generations of gay people, whereas many kids these days don’t even have to come out! Could it become the same with autism? That’s his hope.

Carol Greenburg: Wants autism normalized. “Your child is going to be autistic and have green eyes.” That kind of normalization.

throneofsouls.bsky.social @throneofsouls.bsky.social: I didn’t get a chance to go to that but I would like to put in my two cents. I think it would be helpful to invite more black autistic women into the discussion. To not only hear their experiences, but to give them representation since they are a minority in a minority whose voices are left silent.

Emily Paige Ballou @epballou.bsky.social‬: Aging. What happens in an aging autistic brain, but also evolving health issues, living circumstances, how do we maintain our independence/autonomy compared to non-autistic people, how do our abilities keep changing over time as we reach older adulthood?

‪Solveig ⚧ – Autistic Acceptance Worldwide‬ @autisticb4mmr.bsky.social‬: I think the top issue is still autism and race. Like, whether someone is seen as needing extra supports, or seen as having behavior problems that need to be addressed via discipline or law enforcement…

And this definitely needs better representation in research.

seedsignal llc (Seidkona) @seedsignal.bsky.social‬:

1. Inquiry: Were autism genes responsible for bilateral emergence?
2. Inquiry: Will this world ever acknowledge autism requires continuum and lifecycle support ? (Stop making us fight each other; it is obscene.)

Q7: What are some barriers make that make autism research results less accessible to Autistic people (cognitive, financial, political etc), and how can we reduce them?

Jamie Chase: Academics who are working on research should make plain language summaries.

Shannon Rosa: The Autistic Self Advocacy Network has an excellent Plain Language resources.

Fae Burrell: CRAE does their plain language translations by hand. It is a great way to get undergrads involved, creating communication that they can understand.

Mel Romualdez: We don’t want to be in ivory towers. What is the point in doing this research if only other researchers read it? She works for autistic people.

Brian Irvine: All papers should have max seven words in their titles!

Hannah Fry: The most immediate effect we can have is to is bring our research to the autistics. We need to take our research to them, instead of making them find it. Take it to the families, talking it through with them, in environments with like-minded people.

Fae Burrell: Because if we don’t the geneticists will.

Fae Burrell has been given funding for a cafe with treats, informal place to have discussions with neurodivergent people and researchers. Students feel like they’re battling every day to get their adjustments, they need to know the people in their corner; this is a way to do that.

Dr Aimée Fletcher (@aimee_speaks) ‪@aimeespeaks.bsky.social‬: Many (majority?) Of research is not published open access and in accessible formats. Often it is found at conferences, in journals & at academic events. More work needs to be done to make sure research is shared in more spaces, directly with communities in preferred formats (video, Easy Read etc).

‪Emily Paige Ballou‬ @epballou.bsky.social‬: Journal articles behind paywalls. Cost of attending conferences like INSAR.

I’d love to see more journals made available through public libraries, the way JSTOR allows access to most material with a library card. And scholarships/stipends for conference attendance.

‪Solveig ⚧ – Autistic Acceptance Worldwide‬ @autisticb4mmr.bsky.social‬:
If I want to go to school right now and pursue a degree in autism research, where do I even start?!?

What department do I go to?!? Who do I ask for advice?!? Where is there scholarship money?!?

Can I go at a slower pace if I need to?!? Who even wants me there?!?

Literally, I would pursue a degree RIGHT NOW if I knew that I could find some kind of job that creates meaningful support to the autistic community.

But I’d like it to be different kind of research than brain scans and stuff. I don’t want to study medicine.

Dr. Alyssa (they/them)‬ @yesthattoo.bsky.social‬: I got a PhD in neuroscience because I was Mad At Autism Research.

My actual PhD topic was Not Autism. I did brain computer interfaces for people with ALS. But a PhD in neuroscience is generally presumed to mean I am qualified to *do* autism research.

My current job is also technically Not Autism. I work at an AAC company as a researcher. But it is autism-relevant in that the research I do tends towards improving AAC access for autistic people.

All this to say it’s often a roundabout mess.

Dena Newman Gassner: Barriers of admin burden. They are intentional delays in accessing services. They are psychological, educational, and financial in nature with a magnified impact on already marginalized persons.

Q8: Any topics we’ve missed that you’d like to discuss?

Hannah Fry: Wants to formally complain about the INSAR 2026 sensory room. It’s a disgrace. No actual accommodations, it’s an afterthought. Just some cushions on the floor! And people are having video conferences in there! If it’s only going to be a dark room, call it that. Don’t call it a sensory room. Put in a lava lamp!

Also they aren’t enforcing the quiet hours for posters either.

Carol Greenburg: Seems to her that they need to have requirements for wha a sensory room is. Maybe actually consult autistic people.

Jamie Chase: Has never until this year felt a sense of autistic community. But it only happens a few days a year. The Autistic Researchers Committee needs to have a Discord or a newsletter to foster community. Monthly Zoom, etc. It can help further research!! Fewer silos.

John Marble: Yes, like Autistic Doctors International, which is now publishing guidelines for interacting with autistic patients. Let’s have more fostering of connections among autistic and neurodivergent community.

‪Solveig ⚧ – Autistic Acceptance Worldwide‬ @autisticb4mmr.bsky.social‬: I feel like this is still going to be an issue…While autism research definitely has improved since the 1980s, there’s still maybe too much emphasis on studying autism from a clinical perspective, which just feels too pathologizing. What about autistic anthropology?

Emily Paige Ballou ‪@epballou.bsky.social‬: Addiction. Relationships and sexuality. What do autistic people feel would most improve our lives? (For me, that would be universal healthcare by a long shot.)

Most of the in-person AutINSAR participants. Kayden (bottom) gets own photo because in the top he was blotted out by my thumb.