Neurodiversity Celebration Week: What dozens of scholars taught us about building a truly inclusive academia

Last summer in Copenhagen, dozens of scholars from around the world gathered to reflect on one question: what would it take to make academia truly inclusive for neurodivergent scholars?

The occasion was the Academy of Management Annual Meeting 2025. Together with colleagues Professor Elena P. Antonacopoulou from the American University of Beirut Mediterraneo, Professor Joan Marques from Woodbury University in the USA, Professor Sharda Nandram from Nyenrode Business University in the Netherlands, Dr Florian Kragulj from WU Vienna University of Economics and Business, and Dr Cat Spellman from Durham University Business School, we organised two sessions.

What followed was one of the most open and rich conversations about our workplaces, focused on the academic setting.

Two sessions, one shared goal

We designed a Caucus and a Professional Development Workshop (PDW) on co-creating an inclusive academia, with a focus on neurodivergent scholars' flourishing. Dr Eva Peters from Singapore Management University joined us as facilitator of the meditation sessions, which were held at the beginning and end of each session.

The timing was deliberate. Neurodiversity, the natural variation in how human brains work, including ADHD, autism, Tourette's, dyslexia, and dyspraxia, among many other cognitive profiles, is increasingly recognised in society. Yet higher education institutions have been slow to catch up.

Academia, with its rigid structures, unwritten social rules, and relentless demand for performance, can be an extraordinarily difficult place for minds that work differently. We wanted to understand what needed to change, and to begin building that change together.

What does being neurodivergent mean?

We opened the floor with three questions. The first asked participants to describe what being neurodivergent meant to them personally.

The answers were striking in their honesty. Participants spoke of processing and using information differently from the majority, of having non-typical working and thinking styles, and of experiencing social contexts and sensory environments in ways that diverge from what institutions tend to expect.

Several described it as a special way of being in the world, or as making meaning in many ways. The language participants used: 'differentiated', 'misunderstood', 'non-typical' is a reminder that neurodivergence is not just an internal experience, but a social one.

What came through most clearly was that neurodivergence is not experienced as a deficit. It is experienced as a different, and entirely valid, way of existing.

How can universities raise awareness?

Our second question asked participants how higher education institutions could do better at building understanding and awareness around neurodiversity.

The responses circled around openness and dialogue. Participants spoke of the importance of talking about neurodivergence openly and without stigma, of using storytelling and personal narrative without judgement, and of creating space for genuine dialogue where questions are welcomed rather than deflected.

Education and concrete resources also featured strongly. So did something less expected: celebration. Participants wanted not just policies and provisions, but a culture that celebrates cognitive difference rather than merely managing it.

One suggestion that generated particular energy was the idea of offering role-play experiences, allowing neurotypical colleagues and students to step, even briefly, into a neurodivergent perspective. It is difficult to build empathy in the abstract. Experience, however imperfect, brings it closer. So, in one such exercise, participants would be asked to prepare and deliver a short teaching segment (structuring their ideas, engaging an audience, and responding to questions) while a facilitator simultaneously would introduce escalating sensory stimuli: strobing overhead lights, the pounding bass of rave music, and a chorus of overlapping voices at high volume. The conditions should be deliberately intense, not as exaggeration, but as an approximation of what many neurodivergent colleagues experience as a normal Tuesday. What the exercise makes visceral is the degree of cognitive toll involved: the difficulty concentrating, the effort required simply to hold a thought, the erosion of confidence mid-sentence. For many neurodivergent workers, this is not an occasional disruption; it is the baseline from which they are expected to perform, contribute, and excel, often without acknowledgement, adjustment, or support.

What does a neuro-inclusive workplace actually look like?

The third question proved the richest of all. We asked participants to describe what a genuinely neuro-inclusive workplace in higher education would feel like.

Flexibility emerged as the central value, not as a concession, but as a structural principle. Participants spoke of flexibility in how people engage with one another, in how meetings are run, and in how work is organised and evaluated. They described a need for real choices, rather than a single prescribed way of doing things.

Equally important was the idea of space (and time): space to process, to sort through ideas, to take the time that thinking sometimes requires. Participants also emphasised that all members should be able to participate, not just those most comfortable with this conversation.

Curiosity emerged as a powerful theme. A neuro-inclusive institution is not one that has all the answers, but one that approaches difference with genuine interest. Leaders listen. They adapt. They do not treat neurodivergence as something to be corrected.

One phrase stayed with us: inter-being. The understanding that we are all shaped by one another, and that a workplace capable of including the full range of human minds is, in the end, better for everyone.

What Essex is building

At the University of Essex, we are not waiting for the wider sector to catch up. We have guidance and a dedicated staff neurodiversity group that provides peer support and community for colleagues with neurodivergent profiles.

Last year, we hosted a Neurodiversity Celebration Week event because visibility matters and because neurodivergence deserves to be celebrated, not merely accommodated.

This year, we are going further. On 25 March 2026, we are hosting a co-creation event as part of a research project on building a blueprint for neuroinclusive workplaces. It is a genuine collaboration: an invitation to help design what inclusion can look like in the workplace.

Whether you are neurodivergent, an ally, a manager, a student, or simply curious, your perspective belongs in this conversation.