Second Annual Autism Studies Lecture
"Missed, Misdiagnosed and Misunderstood:
Women and Girls on the Autism Spectrum"
Francesca Happé, PhD
Thursday, April 20, 2023
5:00 p.m. EST
Rice Commons (Student Center)
Saint Mary’s College of Notre Dame, IN
Francesca Happé is Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience at King's College London. Her work has explored the nature of social understanding in neurotypical development and "mentalizing" difficulties in autism. She is actively engaged in studies of abilities and assets in autism and their relation to detail-focused cognitive style. Her most recent work focuses on mental health on the autism spectrum and under-researched subgroups including women and the elderly. Her research methods have spanned cognitive experiments, functional neuroimaging, exploration of acquired brain lesions, and behavior genetic approaches.
She has written and/or edited several books, including Autism: A New Introduction to Psychological Theory and Debate (with Sue Fletcher-Watson) and Girls and Autism: Educational, Family and Personal Perspectives (with Barry Carpenter and Jo Egerton). She has also authored more than 200 journal articles.
Professor Happé is a Fellow of the British Academy and the Academy of Medical Sciences, as well as a past-President of the International Society for Autism Research. She has received the British Psychological Society Spearman Medal, the Experimental Psychology Society Prize, and the Royal Society Rosalind Franklin Award.
Guests will be required to comply with all COVID and campus visitor policies at this event.
Past Lectures
First Annual Autism Studies Lecture
"Developing Talents"
Temple Grandin, PhD
Wednesday, April 20, 2022
7:00 p.m. EST
O’Laughlin Auditorium
Saint Mary’s College (Notre Dame, IN)
In this lecture, Temple Grandin drew from her own experience with autism spectrum disorder and her own career to discuss ways to nurture and turn talents and special interests into paid work. She explored jobs that are particularly suited to people on the autism spectrum. And she shared first-hand accounts of job experiences and advice from individuals representing a broad range of careers that are especially well suited for people on the spectrum.
Temple Grandin is a professor of animal science at Colorado State University, a pioneer in improving the handling and welfare of farm animals, and one of the world's first and most influential autistic self-advocates. Temple’s achievements are remarkable because she was diagnosed with autism as a child. At age two, she had no speech and all the signs of severe autism, but many hours of speech therapy and intensive teaching enabled Temple to learn to speak. As a teenager, she was subjected to constant teasing. But mentoring from her high school science teacher and her aunt on her ranch in Arizona motivated Temple to pursue a career as a scientist and livestock equipment designer.
Dr. Grandin obtained her B.A. at Franklin Pierce College in 1970. In 1974, she was employed as Livestock Editor for the Arizona Farmer Ranchman and also worked for Corral Industries on equipment design. In 1975, she earned an M.S. in Animal Science at Arizona State University for her work on the behavior of cattle in different squeeze chutes. And in 1989, she was awarded a Ph.D in Animal Science from the University of Illinois for her research on the effect of environmental enrichment on the behavior of pigs. She is currently a Professor at Colorado State University, where she continues her research and teaches courses on livestock handling and facility design.
Dr. Grandin has done extensive work on the design of handling facilities. Half the cattle in the U.S. and Canada are handled in equipment she has designed for meat plants. Her other professional activities include developing animal welfare guidelines for the meat industry and consulting with companies on animal welfare.
Dr. Grandin has published over 70 refereed journal articles and authored several hundred industry publications, book chapters and technical papers on animal handling. She has also written more than a dozen books, including Animals in Translation, which was a New York Times best seller, and Livestock Handling and Transport, which is now in its fifth edition. Some of her more popular books include Thinking in Pictures, Emergence: Labeled Autistic, Animals Make us Human, Improving Animal Welfare: A Practical Approach, The Way I See It, and The Autistic Brain.
Dr. Grandin has been awarded honorary doctorates from McGill University, the University of Illinois, Texas A&M, Carnegie Mellon, and Duke University. She has also won a number of prestigious industry awards and was honored in Time Magazine’s “100 Most Influential People in the World” in 2010. HBO produced a movie about Grandin’s early life and career in the livestock industry. The movie received seven Emmy awards, a Golden Globe, and a Peabody Award. In 2016, she was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.