iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Dr. Holly E.A. Sutherland @heasutherland.com · 14/08/2026

I got a fellowship! I'll be spending the next 3yrs looking at how autistic people conceptualise (dis)honesty in conversations. Huge thanks to @britishacademy.bsky.social for funding this important research; and to Clare College, Cambridge, who have taken me on as a JRF. What a dream come true.

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Dr. Holly E.A. Sutherland @heasutherland.com · 25/04/2026

If you missed our poster at #INSAR26 on how autism impacts adults' ability to identify and exploit ambiguous language (and the novel creativity task we used to assess this!), you can now see it here: www.heasutherland.com/publication/...

An academic poster presented at INSAR 2026.

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Dr. Holly E.A. Sutherland @heasutherland.com · 12/09/2025

Hello! Im at #AECongress25 - do come say hi if you see me. I also have a talk this afternoon about the double empathy problem in care and support services!

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Dr. Holly E.A. Sutherland @heasutherland.com · 18/08/2025

I'm going to be speaking at this, as part of the "Human-AI teaming: Whose voices are missing?" session - talking about how neurodivergent voices and minds need to be included when designing AI to work collaboratively with humans.

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Dr. Holly E.A. Sutherland @heasutherland.com · 29/07/2025

Belated because I've been super busy, but I graduated a few weeks ago! I'm *officially* Dr. Sutherland now. Not sure I can really explain what that means to me - I've wanted a doctorate for as long as I can remember. Huge thanks to the wonderful supervisors who helped get me there. 💜

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Dr. Holly E.A. Sutherland @heasutherland.com · 08/04/2025

Reminder that I'm doing a talk tomorrow for the Middletown Centre on neuro-affirming support for autistic people with higher support needs. Aimed at carers, professionals, parents etc. - do come along! More info & ticket link: www.heasutherland.com/talk/neuro-a...

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Dr. Holly E.A. Sutherland @heasutherland.com · 07/04/2025

Reminding me that I really, *really* need to take "Empire of Normality" with me to read on my annual leave next week. (Fein, 2018; "Autism as a Mode of Engagement")

Screenshot of some text: "The Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule both exemplifies contemporary pressures toward the routinization and standardization of social life, and enforces the imperative to render those pressures invis ible by manifesting social behavior that appears sufficiently “spontaneous” and not inappropriately “scripted.” As such, it equates social health with a particular contemporary form of authenticity, characterized by a linked pair of cultural imperatives: the requirement to adjust one’s behavior to a precise set of social norms, while simultaneously making it appear as though one were acting purely out of one’s own immediate, spontaneous, and internally generated inclinations. An autistic mode of engagement is incompatible with these imperatives, because the cultural products that structure behavior remain obdurately visible as such, thus confronting us with the rigid, repetitive, routinized forms that populate and order our social lives. We are inevitably shaped by the ways in which we have shaped our surroundings"

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Dr. Holly E.A. Sutherland @heasutherland.com · 13/03/2025

This morning, I had the pleasure of talking at @autisticsociety.bsky.social's conference about neuroaffirming practice. This afternoon, I was looking over my autism diagnosis report (from '08!), and saw this at the end of it. Got a lot of feelings about now being part of producing those resources...

A picture of a sentence. It reads: "The other resources that could be accessed are the National Autistic Society website on www.nas.org.uk"

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Dr. Holly E.A. Sutherland @heasutherland.com · 05/03/2025

Updated my website with some talks I'm doing over the next few months - a lot of stuff aimed at professionals working with autistic people, including autistic people with higher support needs. More info & booking links at: heasutherland.com/event/

Screenshot of a webpage with four talks listed about neurodiversity and neuroaffirmative practice for autism, for the National Autistic Society, Therapist Neurodiversity Collective, and Middletown Centre for Autism. Dates times titles etc. are available at the link provided.

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Dr. Holly E.A. Sutherland @heasutherland.com · 03/03/2025

I'm excited to be one of the speakers at @autisticsociety.bsky.social's Annual Professionals’ Conference, live online on 13th March 2025. The conference's theme is exploring neuroaffirmative practice. I'll be talking about high support needs. Tickets and information: www.autism.org.uk/conference

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Dr. Holly E.A. Sutherland @heasutherland.com · 24/02/2025

Re-reading through my thesis in advance of my viva (which is tomorrow?!) and, out of 112,000 words worth of sentences, I think these two might be my favourite:

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Dr. Holly E.A. Sutherland @heasutherland.com · 28/01/2025

Sneak preview of my contribution to this "methods with nonspeaking people" seminar: www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/qualitativ... Grab a free online ticket now!

A screenshot of a beige powerpoint slide with a prism and a rainbow on it. The title is "Ethnography, neurodiversity, and high support needs", by Holly E.A. Sutherland at the University of Cambridge. There are links to the author's socials: heasutherland.com , heas2@cam.ac.uk , and @heasutherland. There are funding logos for the University of Edinburgh, Medical Research Scotland, and Scottish autism.

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Dr. Holly E.A. Sutherland @heasutherland.com · 21/01/2025

Why does Outlook think it more likely that people will be working at *midnight on a Wednesday* than at 5.09pm on a Tuesday?!

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Dr. Holly E.A. Sutherland @heasutherland.com · 21/01/2025

I'll be talking as part of this next Thursday! If you'd like a more methods-focused insight into my ethnographic research with autistic people with high support needs, do come along. The fantastic Léon van Ommen and Freddie Jones will also be presenting.

A screenshot of the Eventbrite page for a talk titled "Qualitatively eliciting the 'voice' of non-speaking neurodiverse people". The talk is at 12-1pm GMT, Thursday January 30th, online. It is free to reserve a ticket. The talk description reads: Our session will appeal to researchers interested in using qualitative methods with participants who may be non-speaking or minimally verbal. The talk is hosted by Methods North West.

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Dr. Holly E.A. Sutherland @heasutherland.com · 01/12/2024

Not enjoying doing thesis edits on a Sunday, but I'm so close to being finished that I can almost taste it... (And, of course, I'm being helped along by The Bean's generous squatting on my lap. Always helps with doing something unpleasant when you have a little cat to assist.)

Picture of a longhaired, seal-point cat curled up into a ball on a quilt, which is draped over my lap.

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Dr. Holly E.A. Sutherland @heasutherland.com · 27/11/2024

Working on a lecture I'm giving for some students on Stirling's autism masters course on Friday, and I'm actually quite excited about it. We're going to be talking about how the neurodiversity paradigm applies to autistic people with high support needs, especially re: support & interventions.

Screenshot of the first slide of a powerpoint. The title of the talk is on a rainbow-splattered post-it note: "What does the neurodiversity paradigm have to say about autistic people with high support needs?" Underneath is the author name: "Holly Sutherland, University of Cambridge". There are contact details off to the side: website heasutherland.com email heas2@cam.ac.uk social media @heasutherland

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Dr. Holly E.A. Sutherland @heasutherland.com · 05/11/2024

… and this hostility can be due to “autistic deficits” (participants' words), misunderstandings, or people’s histories with trauma/ableism. Also a) aut community is still trying to work out what being authentically autistic looks like! and b) autistic people are not monolithic + “we’re all human”.

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Dr. Holly E.A. Sutherland @heasutherland.com · 05/11/2024

Theme 5: Autistic community is complicated. Other aut ppl good to be around, but aut communities (esp. online) can be exclusionary and hostile, esp to the newly autistic who don’t know the right words etc. …

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Dr. Holly E.A. Sutherland @heasutherland.com · 05/11/2024

Theme 3: Autistic people put a lot of effort into accommodating nonautistic preferences, but nonautistic people are bad at accommodating autistic preferences. This is unfair and upsetting. Nonaut ppl often think they’re being empathetic to aut ppl but are not.

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Dr. Holly E.A. Sutherland @heasutherland.com · 05/11/2024

…about their social communication style & preferences, and their experiences interacting with other autistic vs. nonautistic people. Thematic analysis. Five themes:

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Dr. Holly E.A. Sutherland @heasutherland.com · 04/11/2024

Result #3: Autism identification is very context dependent, especially for autistic observers. Autistic observers change guess behaviour between photos and videos (nonautist observers don’t): their guessing becomes closer to nonautistic guess pattern in photo task…

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Dr. Holly E.A. Sutherland @heasutherland.com · 04/11/2024

…this is largely because of the effects of averaging over a lot of different conditions. We’re good at identifying autism! Better than nonautistic observers. We just often think pairs of nonautistic people are both autistic. So this might be guess bias, not autdar.

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Dr. Holly E.A. Sutherland @heasutherland.com · 04/11/2024

Result #2: Autistic observers are not better than nonautistic observers at identifying autism in others – we seem to be slightly worse, actually. (Caveat: this is just for *watching* interactions. Results might be different when taking part in interactions.) But…

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Dr. Holly E.A. Sutherland @heasutherland.com · 04/11/2024

Results #1: It’s easiest to identify autism in mixed pairs. Very hard for autistic pairs; observers tend to think both are nonautistic! We think this is probably because people are looking for social awkwardness to identify autism, and autistic pairs aren’t awkward.

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Dr. Holly E.A. Sutherland @heasutherland.com · 01/11/2024

We know autistic sociality and communication differs to nonautistic, but how? Not a lot of rich descriptions of this from autistic perspectives, so we did a focus group with nine autistic adults about their social/communicative experiences and thematically analysed it. Five themes:

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Dr. Holly E.A. Sutherland @heasutherland.com · 30/10/2024

The video from my talk at MMU's #LearningDisability and #autism seminar series, "Friendships, fear, and (double) empathy: an ethnography of social care services for autistic people with high support needs" is now up! 🎥Check it out at www.heasutherland.com/talk/friends...

Screenshot of a colourful blue and yellow powerpoint slide. It says "Friendships, fear, and (double) empathy: an ethnography of social care services for autistic people with high support needs. Holly Sutherland, Postdoctoral researcher, University of Cambridge". It includes a website link (heasutherland.com), an email (heas2@cam.ac.uk) and a social media username for twitter & bsky (heasutherland).

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Dr. Holly E.A. Sutherland @heasutherland.com · 04/01/2024

New year; same hairy little beast appropriating my mousepad for her own personal throne.

A long-haired cat sat on a mouse pad, almost on top of the mouse. She is seal-pointed (grey-cream with black face and ears), and is very, very fluffy with rumpled fur and and extremely long whiskers and eyebrow hairs. She is looking directly at the camera with her blue eyes slightly squinted and a disdainful look on her face.

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Dr. Holly E.A. Sutherland @heasutherland.com · 12/12/2023

Dawn* of the final day (of my fieldwork) (*Scottish edition; sunlight not guaranteed)

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Dr. Holly E.A. Sutherland @heasutherland.com · 01/11/2023

Gonna be joining #AcademicSky #AcWriMo using @jofletchersaxon.bsky.social's prompts - today, read (my ethnography fieldwork notes) for 25mins, and then write (a rough interview guide based on them) for 25mins!

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Dr. Holly E.A. Sutherland @heasutherland.com · 10/10/2023

Novel approach to my ongoing "I need light- oh god not that much light" dilemna when at my desk: relocating my haphazard tomato-growing operation (produces approx. 2 tomatoes a month; it's very high-tech).

Photograph of a window overlooking some flat buildings, with the top edge of a computer monitor in the foreground. Between the monitor and the window, a number of wild-looking tomato plants protrude from above the top edge of the screen.

A photograph of the bottom half of a window, looking out onto some grassy back gardens. Hung in the middle of the window is a decorative plastic ornament shaped like a crystal and catching the light. The view out the window is partially obscured by a wild tangle of tomato plants, with a handful of tiny red tomatoes on one plant.

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