Social media is not perfect by any means, but it DOES offer autistic youth a space to socialise & make new friends, have fun while engaging with interests, and generally decompress from the stresses of everyday life. Banning under 16s from social media will only increase isolation.
Interested in what we do? We're now looking for a new postdoctoral researcher to join the team, with a focus on the multimodal part of the project. See the link for more detail.
Last week's workshop was a resounding success! It was great to hear about a variety of projects into neurodivergent interaction. You can more about the workshop on our blog: autisminaffinityspaces.org/our-workshop...
Update: Registration is now live! www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/focused-in...
You can sign up for just one day or both days. Reminder that Thursday is online and Friday is hybrid. All welcome, hope to see as many of you as possible in January!
Save the date for our upcoming workshop - 8th and 9th January 2026. We welcome autistic people, allies, academics, practitioners, clinicians, education professionals, anyone who cares about autistic interests and flourishing!
#AutRes #AutismResearch
PowerPoint slide - text reads "interests for autistic people that lead to connection seems to happen differently than for allistic people. We need to happily employ flow states, unashamedly, and prosper as autistic people. The flipside to flow is autistic inertia (rapaport et al 2024)
Inspiring talk this afternoon by Wenn Lawson on monotropism and the importance of interests and flow states for autistic quality of life #AECongress2025 #AEC2025
Screenshot of PowerPoint title - "It can feel nice to know that other people are also a bit weird/nerdy": Autistic young people's participation within online interest-based spaces
This week, Jess will be travelling to Dublin for the Autism Europe conference.
Come along to the panel on 'Language and Communication' on Saturday at 10:45 to hear more about out work!
"There are some intensely invested autistic people who are left wondering if and how they can continue to interact with material that has been produced by harmful people" like JK Rowling and Neil Gaiman. Thankfully, @fodderfigure.bsky.social has sage advice:
thinkingautismguide.com/2025/07/when...
Read our latest post here: autisminaffinityspaces.org/my-experienc...
“A support group for autistic people has revealed itself to be nothing more than a front for a sickening underground Dungeons and Dragons ring, it has been reported.”
Satire from @thedailytism.com:
thedailytism.com/autism-suppo...
Our project is now two years old!
To find out more about what we've been doing this whole time, you can read our first project report on our website : autisminaffinityspaces.org/our-first-pr...
If you're an autistic young person (16-26) and would like to write a short blog post sharing your own experiences of social media (both the good, the bad, the in-between) then we'd love to hear from you!
On our blog, we're going to be showcasing some firsthand accounts of how autistic young people use digital media for engaging with intense interests
Read one account here from a young activist, who moderates online spaces to help bring people together:
autisminaffinityspaces.org/firsthand-ex...
Workshop: Focused Interests, Identity, and Autistic Communication across Contexts How are focused interests linguistically constructed, socially received, and differently valued? How can we centre them as a strength rather than a symptom? When: January 2026 (date tbc) Where: Queen Mary University of London and Online
Happy Autistic Pride Day!
We're currently organising a workshop for January 2026, based around autistic identity, specific interests, and communication.
How can we centre autistic interests as a strength, rather than a symptom in need of intervention?
Full details TBC - stay tuned.
When an autistic person is sharing a special interest be mindful that growing up we were often shut down or made fun of for sharing & what you consider “playful teasing” can be taken as mean/hurtful especially if we feel confident/comfy enough to unmask & share something with you or our communities.
A word cloud of intense interests. The largest words are autism, mental health, and video games. Other words include books, films, pokemon, adovacy, dogs, dungeons and dragons, doctor who, cats, musical theatre, animals, football, wrestling, animal crossing, and music
Most autistic people have at least one area of highly intense interest (also known as 'special interests')
These interests help to bring joy, structure & meaning to people's lives and can be a big part of somebody's identity.
Here are some of the interests of our survey participants!
On this account, we'll be sharing project updates including new publications, upcoming events, and ways to get involved.
Hello! This is the new account for Autism in Affinity Spaces project at Queen Mary London. Our linguistics project is examining how autistic young people communicate in online interest-based groups and how we can improve these experiences to build inclusive digital spaces
Thrilled to see the first publication from the Autism in Affinity Spaces (with @nelya-kot.bsky.social and @martinevandriel.bsky.social) now in print with Applied Linguistics: academic.oup.com/applij/advan...