2022-2023

Stories often reflect the social world we live in, and can enrich our understanding of ourselves and others.  Adolescence is a period of life characterised by exploration of identity and discovery of self; books offer opportunities for young people to explore personally meaningful content, which can help them navigate this time.

Research focusing on inclusive representation in young people’s literature has focused almost entirely on racial and ethnic representation. This study will be the first to provide detailed insight into neurodivergent young people’s perceptions of how their lives and experiences are represented in narrative fiction (and other text types), with neurodivergent young people informing our research process.

Project Aims:

To understand the scale and breadth of representation of neurodivergent young people in fictional texts for secondary school readers.

To understand neurodivergent young people’s opinions and experiences of representation of neurodivergence in narrative fiction.

This project is funded by a University of Edinburgh Challenge Investment Fund. To learn more about the project you can contact Sarah McGeown: s.mcgeown@ed.ac.uk

Project Team:

Project Lead: Dr Sarah McGeown

Project Researchers: Elena Santi and Charlotte Webber

Co-investigators: Dr Katie Cebula, Dr Catherine Crompton and Professor Sue Fletcher-Watson

Project Partners:

Christina Clark, National Literacy Trust

Ruthann Hughes, BookTrust

Katie Juckes, Teacher

Lucy Juckes, Barrington Stoke

Eadaoin Lynch, Scottish Book Trust

Emily Weston, Teacher

Victoria Williamson, Author