Sarinah O'Donoghue
Independent Researcher | Employability Officer | Neurodiversity Advocate
Bio
Welcome! I’m Sarinah O’Donoghue, an Independent Researcher, Employability Officer, and Self-Advocate. I completed my Literature PhD, which focused on lived experiences of autism as represented through narrative accounts, in January 2025. During my PhD, I co-founded two networks (the Narratives of Neurodiversity Network and the Neurodivergent Humanities Network), online social spaces to share ideas and spread the word of neurodiversity. I’ve written several articles (both single authored and co-authored) on various aspects of autism, neurodiversity, and narrative, and am currently writing a book based on my PhD thesis, published by Bloomsbury, and due for release in summer 2026. I currently work fulltime as an Employability Officer for a national charity, helping neurodivergent and disabled people into work. I have been a passionate Self-Advocate since my autism diagnosis in 2017, writing magazine columns and making videos, attending seminars and giving presentations, interviewing authors, and appearing on radio shows and podcasts. This website is a place to put my different projects in one place, share my work, and invite collaboration. I hope you get something from it!
Publications
(1) O’Donoghue, S., ‘Book Review: Anna Stenning’s Narrating the Many Autisms: Identity, Agency, Mattering’, Somatosphere, Feb 2025.
(2) O’Donoghue, S., ‘Narrating Autism: New Critical and Theoretical Directions for Reading Narratives of the Autistic Self-Advocacy Movement’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Aberdeen, 2024)
(3) O’Donoghue, S., ‘“Read Between the Signs”: Autism, Sensory Anthropology, and Literary Invention’, in Critical Neurodiversity Studies: Divergent Textualities in Literature and Culture, ed. by Jenny Bergenmar, Louise Creechan, and Anna Stenning (London: Bloomsbury, in press).
(4) O’Donoghue, S., ‘“Thinking with Sticks”: Autistic Life Narratives and their Material Components”, Interconnections: Journal of Posthumanism, 2.2 (2023), 33-47.
(5) Bertilsdotter Rosqvist, H., Nygren, A., and O’Donoghue, S., ‘Moving Through a Textual Space Autistically’, Journal of Medical Humanities, 45 (2023), 17-34.
(6) Betts, K., Creechan, L., Cawkwell, R., Finn-Kelcey, I., Griffin, C.J., Hagopian A., Hartley D., Manalili, M., Murkumbi, I., O’Donoghue, S., Shanahan, C., Stenning, A., and Zisk, A., ‘Neurodiversity, Networks, and Narratives: Exploring Intimacy and Expressive Freedom in the Time of Covid-19’, Social Inclusion, 11.1 (2023).
(7) Bertilsdotter Rosqvist, H., Botha, M., Hens, K., O’Donoghue, S., Pearson, A., and Stenning, A., ‘“Cutting our own keys”: New Possibilities of Neurodivergent Storying in Research’, Autism, 27.5 (July 2023).
(8) Bertilsdotter Rosqvist, H., Botha, M., Hens, K., O’Donoghue, S., Pearson, A., and Stenning, A., ‘Being, Knowing, and Doing: Importing Theoretical Toolboxes for Autism Studies, Autism in Adulthood, OnlineFirst (September 2022).