Reimagining academia/the humanities: a collaborative zine-making workshop

Join us for a 90-minute online workshop where you’ll create a zine page responding to this question. Organised by a group of neurodivergent researchers, we recognise how institutional structures remain designed around neurotypical norms and create barriers to access. This workshop aims to use zine-making to create space for neurodivergent people to be co-creators in envisioning alternative academic futures; produce tangible outputs that document collective visions for institutional change; and explore how zines provide an accessible medium for articulating critiques and imagining alternatives to conventional academic practices.

When you sign up, we’ll ask you to indicate what you would like to make your zine page about, in response to the central question. This is just to give us an idea of what areas you’re planning to explore. You’re welcome to change your mind when it comes to making your actual page.

Below are some possible directions you could consider (this list is by no means exhaustive, and we welcome alternative responses):

Structural & Institutional Changes
• Flexible Time / Crip Time
• Built Environment (e.g. buildings, outdoor spaces)
• Communication Styles
• Administration (e.g. meetings, unwritten rules, ‘professionalism’)

Pedagogical Shifts
• Teaching/Assessment Methods
• Designing for varied attention, sensory profiles, processing styles

Research & Collaboration
• Conferences (hybrid, work-in-progress, sensory)
• Process over outputs, nonlinear knowledge production
• Collaborations to complement strengths
• Community building

Knowledge & Epistemology
• Alternative ways of knowing (intuition, pattern recognition, embodiment)
• Expanding the canon, alternative forms
• New theoretical frameworks and temporalities

Your zine page can include anything: written text, drawings, collage, comics, lists, diagrams, photographs, or mixed media. There is no ‘right’ way to make a zine!

This event is free to attend. The Teams link will be circulated closer to the date.

This event is hosted by the Neurodivergent Humanities Network, in collaboration with the Discovery Research Platform for Medical Humanities.