Neurodiverse students within higher education - initial thoughts from a collaborative project

The term ‘neurodiversity’ is increasingly used to reference groups of individuals with cognitive differences including, but not limited to, those diagnosed with autism. Neurodiverse students make up an increasing proportion of students in higher education, and this is also true for doctoral studies, which has different expectations of the student, and through which the student engages differently with the academy. As part of a current HEFi-funded project which focuses on how neurodiverse doctoral students can best be prepared for their viva voce examination, we have interrogated the literature that looks at neurodiversity within higher education. We considered the diagnostic categories most commonly regarded as ‘neurodiverse’ within higher education, and what recommendations have been made for academic adjustments. We report here on our initial findings, their implications for our own project at the University of Birmingham, and for doctoral study within higher education more generally. Key considerations are the relatively high proportion of neurodiverse individuals who have co-occurring conditions and the issue of non-disclosure for students with unseen disabilities. We conclude that the principles of Universal Design for Learning (UDL) would potentially be of use to develop viva voce guidance which anticipates potential barriers, and we intend to explore this in the next stages of our project.