Locating Ourselves in the Modern Academy

Abstract

Abstract This introductory chapter situates the book within the contemporary academy and explains why this collection is both necessary and timely. It outlines how neurodivergent academics are navigating institutions that increasingly claim inclusion while operating through systems that intensify pressure, precarity and exclusion. Rather than rehearsing the history of the neurodiversity movement, this chapter frames the book as a collective act of sense-making, grounded in first-person storytelling across career stages, disciplines and global contexts. It introduces shared concepts that recur throughout the volume, including the double empathy problem, masking, and autistic..