Autism in Affinity Spaces

Save the date for our upcoming workshop - 8th and 9th January 2026. We welcome autistic people, allies, academics, practitioners, clinicians, education professionals, anyone who cares about autistic interests and flourishing!

#AutRes #AutismResearch

PowerPoint slide - text reads "interests for autistic people that lead to connection seems to happen differently than for allistic people. We need to happily employ flow states, unashamedly, and prosper as autistic people. The flipside to flow is autistic inertia (rapaport et al 2024)

Inspiring talk this afternoon by Wenn Lawson on monotropism and the importance of interests and flow states for autistic quality of life #AECongress2025 #AEC2025

Screenshot of PowerPoint title - "It can feel nice to know that other people are also a bit weird/nerdy": Autistic young people's participation within online interest-based spaces

This week, Jess will be travelling to Dublin for the Autism Europe conference.

Come along to the panel on 'Language and Communication' on Saturday at 10:45 to hear more about out work!

When Autistic Special Interests Get Canceled — THINKING PERSON'S GUIDE TO AUTISM How can autistic people cope, when their passions or special interests become irretrievably flawed, or get canceled?

"There are some intensely invested autistic people who are left wondering if and how they can continue to interact with material that has been produced by harmful people" like JK Rowling and Neil Gaiman. Thankfully, @fodderfigure.bsky.social has sage advice:

thinkingautismguide.com/2025/07/when...

Read our latest post here: autisminaffinityspaces.org/my-experienc...

Autism support group revealed to be front for underground D&D ring A support group for autistic people has revealed itself to be nothing more than a front for a sickening underground Dungeons and Dragons ring, it has been reported. A local chapter of the ‘Little Budd...

“A support group for autistic people has revealed itself to be nothing more than a front for a sickening underground Dungeons and Dragons ring, it has been reported.”

Satire from @thedailytism.com:

thedailytism.com/autism-suppo...

Our project is now two years old!

To find out more about what we've been doing this whole time, you can read our first project report on our website : autisminaffinityspaces.org/our-first-pr...

If you're an autistic young person (16-26) and would like to write a short blog post sharing your own experiences of social media (both the good, the bad, the in-between) then we'd love to hear from you!

On our blog, we're going to be showcasing some firsthand accounts of how autistic young people use digital media for engaging with intense interests

Read one account here from a young activist, who moderates online spaces to help bring people together:

autisminaffinityspaces.org/firsthand-ex...

Workshop: Focused Interests, Identity, and Autistic Communication across Contexts How are focused interests linguistically constructed, socially received, and differently valued? How can we centre them as a strength rather than a symptom? When: January 2026 (date tbc) Where: Queen Mary University of London and Online

Happy Autistic Pride Day!

We're currently organising a workshop for January 2026, based around autistic identity, specific interests, and communication.

How can we centre autistic interests as a strength, rather than a symptom in need of intervention?

Full details TBC - stay tuned.

When an autistic person is sharing a special interest be mindful that growing up we were often shut down or made fun of for sharing & what you consider “playful teasing” can be taken as mean/hurtful especially if we feel confident/comfy enough to unmask & share something with you or our communities.

A word cloud of intense interests. The largest words are autism, mental health, and video games. Other words include books, films, pokemon, adovacy, dogs, dungeons and dragons, doctor who, cats, musical theatre, animals, football, wrestling, animal crossing, and music

Most autistic people have at least one area of highly intense interest (also known as 'special interests')

These interests help to bring joy, structure & meaning to people's lives and can be a big part of somebody's identity.

Here are some of the interests of our survey participants!

On this account, we'll be sharing project updates including new publications, upcoming events, and ways to get involved.

Hello! This is the new account for Autism in Affinity Spaces project at Queen Mary London. Our linguistics project is examining how autistic young people communicate in online interest-based groups and how we can improve these experiences to build inclusive digital spaces

Discourse-based approaches to autistic focussed interests: Understanding shared focus, mutual accommodation, and multimodal expression Abstract. Interactions between autistic and non-autistic people are often characterized by misunderstanding and a ‘double empathy problem’ (Milton, Gurbuz,

Thrilled to see the first publication from the Autism in Affinity Spaces (with @nelya-kot.bsky.social and @martinevandriel.bsky.social) now in print with Applied Linguistics: academic.oup.com/applij/advan...