Date: 19th September 2024
Time: 19:00 – 20:30 
Location: Online

Brian Irvine who will deliver a talk entitled Mentoring as Reframing – Specialist Autism Mentoring at University.

Join Brian for a ramble through the ins and outs of mentoring neurodivergent students in higher education – and beyond. With over a decade of experience as a Specialist Mentor and a background in participatory research, Brian will share how mentoring can help reshape students’ views of themselves and support their flourishing both academically and personally.

What You’ll Learn:

  1. Get a better understanding of what Specialist Mentoring is all about for autistic and ADHD university students.
  2. Discover a new way of thinking about mentoring that could be helpful in different educational settings.

What We’ll Cover:

  1. What is Mentoring? – A look at the roots of mentoring from history and mythology to today’s practical applications.
  2. Support in Higher Education – How the DSA works and the importance of Universal Design in making education a little more accessible.
  3. Participatory Research – The power of working together with autistic students to ask the right questions and find meaningful answers.
  4. Mentoring as Reframing – Practical tips on how mentors can help students see their experiences in a new light, focusing on strengths and navigating challenges.

Hopefully, we’ll challenge how we traditionally view mentoring and offer practical tips for anyone working with neurodiverse students in higher education. Come prepared to think differently about support, inclusion, and the power of mutual understanding.

The talk is open to everyone and will be recorded.  There will be time for questions.

About Brian Irvine
Brian works at UCL on CRAE’s ESRC funded Superior Perceptual Capacity in Autism. He completed his doctoral thesis at ACER, the University of Birmingham’s Autism Centre for Education and Research. There he investigated Specialist (Autism) Mentoring in UK Higher Education. Over the last decade, he was a mentor at Royal Holloway, University of London where he had had the pleasure of regular meetings with many brilliant students as they journeyed through their university life. His background is in autism education and – last century – was Head of Philosophy and Religious Education at a secondary-modern school. For fun he plays the ukelele, as it seems to make people back away slowly.

The Centre for Autism Wellbeing Hub
The Wellbeing Hub is a new initiative, funded by University of Reading Alumni. The aim of the Hub is to bring together autistic people, their families, practitioners and researchers to co-produce and deliver neurodiversity-affirming activities that support autistic young people and their families to thrive and flourish.

Click on the link to register

In the meantime, please email us if we can offer any further assistance: cfaevents@reading.ac.uk