The M-WAY team go to INSAR 2024!

Sarah and Erin from the M-WAY team attended the annual meeting of the International Society for Autism Research (INSAR). This year the conference was held in Melbourne from the 15th to 18th of May. INSAR is currently the world's largest autism research conference and attracts researchers, clinicians, and stakeholders from around the world!



This was Erin’s first time attending INSAR and her first-time presenting research related to her PhD, in which she is exploring the risk and protective factors associated with self-harm in autistic young people. This was the sixth INSAR that Sarah has attended, having previously presented on her PhD research into autistic people’s parenthood experiences and her pre-doctoral research into autism and bilingualism. Attending the conference was a valuable opportunity for Sarah and Erin to hear about the latest research and catch up with colleagues. 

The conference covered a broad range of topics including brain function, cognition, genetics, early development, interventions, co-occurring conditions and much more! We were most interested in the topics related to the mental health and wellbeing of autistic people as well as projects centring the voices of the autistic community in research. 

Erin particularly appreciated the opportunity to listen to, and connect with, researchers exploring self-injurious behaviour and suicidality in the autistic community. This is an important research topic as autistic people are up to 3 times more likely to die by suicide than non-autistic people. Although we are only just beginning to understand the factors associated with the development and maintenance of self-injurious behaviour and suicidality in autistic people, Erin found it really encouraging to learn about the progress that researchers are making in this area. 

Sarah especially valued hearing the latest research on topics prioritised by the autistic community including autistic burnout, victimisation of autistic people, the mental health of gender diverse autistic people, and wellbeing within intimate relationships. It was great to see these important topics being addressed.

We were excited to see a visible presence of autistic researchers presenting their work at INSAR this year. This year was the first time that an openly autistic researcher gave a keynote talk at INSAR. Wenn Lawson gave a fantastic talk on the final day of the conference, highlighting the importance of theories originating in the autistic community such as monotropism (1) and double empathy (2). He talked about autistic people's wellbeing across the lifespan, highlighting the experience of gender diverse people. We hope that future INSAR keynote talks will continue to promote the voices of autistic researchers. Sarah also enjoyed getting to meet other autistic researchers at a social event held by the INSAR Autistic Researchers Committee. It was a wonderful opportunity to get to know the great research being done by the autistic community.


Erin and Sarah presented posters on their research at the conference. Sarah presented qualitative research from her PhD in which she looked at autistic parents' mental and physical health after giving birth. Her poster highlighted some of the ways autistic parents are not getting the support they need after having a baby, particularly in terms of mental health. It was valuable to be able to share these findings and discuss them with other researchers who are passionate about this issue.



Erin presented quantitative research focusing on the relationships between timing of autism diagnosis, puberty, secondary school adjustment and victimisation and internalising symptoms (emotion and peer problems) across adolescence. Her poster highlighted that the factors associated with increasing internalising symptoms during adolescence vary according to timing of diagnosis (early or late) and sex. It was a fantastic opportunity to discuss these findings with other researchers and to consider the relevance of the work for prevention and intervention strategies for internalising symptoms in young autistic people.

We look forward to seeing what next year's INSAR in Seattle has in store and hopefully getting to present some of the M-WAY findings!


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(1) Murray, D., Lawson, W. and Lesser, M. (2005). Attention, monotropism and the diagnostic criteria for autism. Autism. 9 (2): 139–56. doi:10.1177/1362361305051398

(2) Milton, D. E. M. (2012). On the ontological status of autism: The ‘double empathy problem’. Disability & Society, 27(6), 883–887. https://doi.org/10.1080/09687599.2012.710008





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