Being-neurodivergent-in-the-world: an embodied and sensory ethnography

This study aims to investigate the embodied nature of what becoming neurodivergent (ND)
means for newly diagnosed adults in the UK. It is estimated that 4% of this population are
ADHD, 1-2% autistic, 10% dyslexic, and 5% dyspraxic (ACAS, 2020). In secondary school, I
was diagnosed as dyslexic but it was not until 2018, a sum of eight years and several
clinicians later, that I was finally diagnosed as autistic and ADHD. Becoming ND in adulthood
is a life-changing process that is little understood, academically or in health practice, and
has been declared "an emerging area of priority" in the UK (Stagg & Belcher, 2019; POST,
2020, p.4).
In psychology and neuroscience, 'the state of being ND' (neurodivergence) is framed
clinically and these diagnoses are pathologised as monotropic 'disorders' of the mind (Baron-
Cohen, 2017, 2002, Pegado et al., 2020; Ortega, 2013, 2009; Oller, 2019; Soukup, 2018; Fraga
González & Jurgen, 2018). In non-academic literature, neurodivergence is framed
autobiographically and these confessional narratives are inadequately theorised (Adams &
Laing, 2020; James, 2017; Suskind, 2014; Simone & Willey, 2010; Donvan & Zucker, 2017).
These two bodies of literature fail to capture becoming ND as a mindbody experience, which
embodied and sensory anthropology will allow me to do.