While there is a growing body of research exploring the experiences of autistic students in higher education, the perspectives of autistic academic staff remain largely absent from educational research. Existing studies that do address autistic academics are limited in number, geographically concentrated, and often framed through deficit-oriented or individualised lenses (Gormley, Feeney, & McNally, 2023). As a result, little is known about how autistic academics navigate their professional roles, experience belonging, or encounter institutional structures that shape academic work. This absence reflects broader patterns of epistemic exclusion, in which autistic people are underrepresented not only as research participants but also as knowers within education research (Fricker, 2007).

This co-produced qualitative study explores the lived experiences of autistic academic staff working in higher education in Ireland. It focuses on how participants describe their work, their sense of belonging within academic environments, and the institutional conditions that support or constrain their participation. Particular attention is given to role clarity, social expectations, workload, disclosure, and the emotional and cognitive labour involved in navigating academic cultures largely structured around neurotypical norms.

The study addresses a significant gap in both Irish and international literature (Gormley et al., 2023). While Irish higher education has made advances in disability inclusion for students, institutional policies and supports for disabled and autistic staff remain comparatively underdeveloped, and national data on autistic employment in higher education are notably absent. By centring autistic academics’ accounts, this study contributes to understanding how higher education institutions shape working lives, and how inclusion is enacted within everyday academic practice.

The study is informed by the neurodiversity paradigm (Walker, 2021), which understands autism as a natural form of human variation rather than a deficit requiring remediation. From this perspective, challenges experienced by autistic academics are located not within individual neurology but within environments, systems, and institutional norms. This perspective views feelings of belonging and well-being among autistic academics as shaped by the workplace environments in which they work (Wong, 2023). This perspective supports attention to how academic spaces, expectations, and cultures shape autistic academics’ experiences of inclusion, recognition, and agency.

The study also draws on the Autistic SPACE framework (Doherty, Cowan, & Shaw, 2023) as an analytic and interpretive lens. While originally developed in healthcare contexts, the Autistic SPACE Framework provides a useful framework for examining how environmental and relational conditions within higher education influence autistic academics’ working lives. Together, these frameworks support an analysis that foregrounds institutional responsibility and examines how knowledge about inclusion is produced, taken up, or resisted within academic systems.

The study addressed the following research questions:

1. What are the experiences of autistic academic staff working in Irish higher education?
2. What strengths and challenges do autistic academics encounter within these settings?

By centring autistic academics’ accounts through a co-produced, neurodiversity-affirming approach, this study offers insight into how higher education institutions shape working lives, belonging, and participation. The findings highlight the gap between what institutions know about inclusion and how that knowledge is enacted in practice, drawing attention to the limits of individualised accommodations in the absence of structural change.

A co-produced research approach underpinned all stages of the study, with autistic and non-autistic researchers collaborating across research design, data collection, analysis, and dissemination (Kenny, et al., 2024). Co-production was understood not simply as a methodological choice, but as an epistemic stance that shaped what could be known, how knowledge was generated, and whose interpretations carried authority within the research process (Stark, et al., 2021). This approach sought to address power imbalances in knowledge production and ensure that autistic perspectives meaningfully informed the study. Eleven autistic academic staff participated in the study. Participants were employed in Irish higher education institutions in teaching and/or research roles and included individuals with a formal autism diagnosis as well as those who self-identified as autistic, recognising barriers to diagnosis and disclosure. Participants were recruited through academic networks, autistic-led networks, and institutional contacts. Data were generated through flexible semi-structured interviews, conducted online and adapted to participants’ communication preferences. Interviews explored experiences of academic work, role expectations, teaching and research responsibilities, disclosure, social interactions, stress and burnout, and perceived strengths. Flexibility in interview format supported accessibility and allowed participants to engage in ways that reduced participation barriers. Data were analysed using Reflexive Thematic Analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2021). Analysis was undertaken collaboratively by a mixed-neurotype research team, with initial coding led by one researcher and subsequent theme development, refinement, and interpretation conducted through collective discussion. Reflexivity was foregrounded throughout, with attention to how researchers’ positionalities and lived experiences shaped analytic decisions. Credibility was supported through peer debriefing, shared analytic memos, and the maintenance of an audit trail documenting analytic development. Ethical approval was granted by the relevant institutional research ethics committee, and all participants provided informed consent.

Participants’ accounts revealed a complex interplay of strengths, challenges, and institutional constraints, organised around four overarching themes. Discovering Being Autistic. For many participants, recognising their autistic identity was described as a transformative process that reshaped understandings of past and present experiences. Diagnosis or self-recognition enabled participants to reframe difficulties previously attributed to personal failure and to recognise environmental and institutional factors. While this process often reduced internalised stigma, it also illuminated the extent to which academic environments had been navigated through sustained masking. Role Ambiguity and Institutional Invisibility. Academic roles were consistently described as diffuse, poorly defined, and reliant on implicit expectations. Unclear boundaries between teaching, research, administration, and service work were experienced as particularly challenging. Participants described difficulty requesting accommodations for role clarity, captured in the recurring refrain, “tell me what my job is.” Role ambiguity functioned as a form of institutional invisibility, rendering autistic needs difficult to articulate or legitimise. Social Challenges, Stress, and Burnout. Academic cultures characterised by constant availability, informal networking, and unspoken social expectations contributed to significant stress and exhaustion. Participants described cumulative sensory overload and sustained masking, often resulting in burnout and withdrawal. Decisions around disclosure were shaped by fears of stigma and professional repercussions, revealing a gap between inclusion rhetoric and practice. Autistic Strengths and Commitment to Teaching. Alongside challenges, participants articulated strengths associated with autistic ways of working, including hyper-focus, pattern recognition, ethical commitment, and deep engagement with teaching and research. Many described strong alignment with values of fairness and care in teaching, though these strengths were often under-recognised within institutional cultures prioritising speed and social performance. While situated in Irish higher education, the findings resonate across European contexts marked by precarity and performance pressures. Implications for policy and practice related to role clarity, workload design, disclosure, and recognition of autistic contributions.

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