Victoria is on the Psychology Pathway at the University of Nottingham; her research involves adapting a self-harm assessment tool with and for autistic people with and without co-occurring disability.

Victoria undertook a month long Overseas Institutional Visit at the Olga Tennison Autism Research Centre (OTARC) at La Trobe University in May 2024.

Victoria’s visit to La Trobe University, Australia enabled her to build a strong working relationship with Associate Professor Darren Hedley the Research Director for OTARC’s Health and Wellbeing programme and others at OTARC. Victoria said that:

“I have been able to form valuable and lasting research networks outside the UK and my present supervisory team that will support my current and future career development. I have learnt a lot from A/Prof. Hedley, the OTARC team and those I met at INSAR, about what true impact looks like for autistic people and how to achieve this in a meaningful way.”

This has enabled Victoria to further build her research networks with the result that academic staff from OTARC plan to visit the University of Nottingham to present their research findings.

During the visit, Victoria was able to disseminate the findings of her recently published research to specialists in autism research at the International Society for Autism Research (INSAR) conference as well as participate in a variety of seminars and workshops.

Additionally, Victoria was able to start writing a co-authored manuscript with researchers at OTARC which she is continuing working on following the end of her visit.

Interested in an Overseas Institutional Visit? Find out more here or get in touch with us on ESRCdtp@warwick.ac.uk