Medical Humanities Research Centre (MHRC)

Esme is an SGSAH-funded PhD student in Theatre Studies with additional supervision from Psychology. Her doctoral thesis explores how elements of postdramatic theatre can be utilised to develop a neurodiverse dramaturgy in which autistic mental states are represented through performance. Her practice incorporates qualitative interviews, as well as her own experiences as an autistic person, to examine how autistic people metaphorise their inner mental experiences. These insights are used to stage the abstract visual and linguistic metaphors employed to describe thoughts, emotions, memory and other mental states. Furthermore, she investigates how this process might challenge pervasive medical-model narratives within autism research, namely that autistic people's lived experiences have traditionally been studied from the outside in rather than from the inside out. Her other research interests include narrative representations of disability, the relationship between autism and adulthood, and the intersection of cognition and performance.

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