These evidence-based resources were created using a participatory design approach and they promote a strength-based view of autism. They are freely available, under a Creative Commons Licence. Have you already used the resources? Please give us your feedback.
If you teach or advise autistic students on their careers options, or you are an employer wanting to recruit and retain autistic graduates, these guides are for you. Co-created with professionals, students and graduates, the guides share inclusive support practice from across Europe, all based on a strengths-based view of autism.
For use by universities or individuals to understand the best ways to advise student on their career options and the process of applying and securing a job. A good understanding of autism is at the heart of this training. We provide hands-on exercises and share tips that careers advisors can easily adopt.
Learn about the steps and challenges involved in choosing a career, applying for a job, and settling into the workplace. The toolkit includes “How to…” articles and case studies from across Europe. There is an interactive profile builder that turns strengths, challenges and preferences into templates to print or email.
IMAGE is an EU-funded partnership of 5 European universities: Leeds Beckett University, University of Helsinki, Free University Amsterdam, Medical School Berlin and the University of Toulouse. IMAGE aims to improve the employability of higher education graduates on the autism spectrum by developing self-advocacy and employability skills in students, promoting high-quality support practice in HE professionals and developing employer awareness and recruitment practices.
The IMAGE project concludes at the end of 2021 and to celebrate and share the project outcomes, we hosted a free virtual conference in Amsterdam, attracting more than 160 registrations. The conference brought together professionals and autistic people wanting to reduce the employability gap faced by autistic university graduates. The programme featured talks by autistic…
Supporting autistic students during the transition into employment. This event took place on Wednesday 10 November 2021. Thank you to all presenters and contributors to the discussions. If you were unable to attend, you can now watch the session videos below. THE IMAGE TEAM About this event On 10 November 2017, IMAGE teams from the…
by Mitzi Waltz, Daniela Del Carlo Goncalves and Monserrat Vasquez Ladron de Guevara Our team at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam were tasked with taking the findings from the IMAGE Project so far, and using them as the basis for a short training programme for careers advisors. The target group included advisors working at universities, and also…
Dr Marc Fabri took part in a panel discussion on neurodiversity in the higher education environment today (16 June 2021). The panel was chaired by Dr Abdoolkarim Vakil, King’s College London, as part of the Inclusive Classrooms Conversations Series, with a focus on the issues and challenges facing neurodivergent learners and lecturers. The online event…
Research around the employment of autistic adults has been on the rise during recent years but there’s still very little data on the employment of autistic graduates in Finland. In her master’s thesis Pinja Turja focused on the employment aspirations and experiences of a small group of autistic university students and recent graduates. Previous studies…
Transition from university into employment is a huge step towards the next phase in students’ life. Many graduates make the transition with ease but for some it can be challenging. Minja Lahdelma examined the support structures of this transition phase from autistic graduate’s perspective in her master thesis. Previous research shows that the number of…
All good things must come to an end. Last but not least we want to take a look at case studies that we have gathered during our research. Over the last few months, researchers at IMAGE have been conducting interviews with students, graduates, university support groups, job coaches and more, to find examples of good…
Our project aims to give professionals the tools they need to succeed in supporting autistic students and graduates. Today we want to share a glimpse of our training material for career advisors. How the training material came to be As we interviewed students and graduates for the IMAGE Project, it soon became clear that some…
Today is World Autism Day and we’re celebrating it with a sneak preview of the IMAGE Employability Toolkit, one of the key outputs from our project. What is the toolkit? The Employability Toolkit is an online resource that helps autistic students and graduates better understand their career goals, develop employability skills and advocate effectively for…
We start April by introducing our last but not least Good Practice Guide. It’s designed for higher education managers to help them make their institution more inclusive. Introduction to Good Practice Guide for Higher Education Managers More and more higher education managers (i.e. people with a responsibility in the university organisation whether they be deans,…
During Autism Awareness Week we want to give you a sample of the materials produced in the IMAGE project. Our third Good Practice Guide is designed for careers advisors. It gives you a basic background in autism and lots of tips and techniques to support autistic career-starters. Employment of autistic graduates Autistic students and graduates—like…
In the course of the Autism Awareness Week, we want to give you a sneak peek of Good Practice Guide for Employers. It is designed for employers who want to employ and include autistic workers in their organization and gain some insight and awareness of autism. Introduction to Good Practice Guide for Employers There are…
This week we are giving you a sneak peek into our research-based materials that are designed to support autistic graduates to gain employment. We begin the week by introducing our Good Practice Guide for Academics. Introduction to Good Practice Guide for Academics This Good Practices Guide has been written especially for academics, by academics with…
In the IMAGE project we aim to support autistic university students to gain employment after graduation. Our focus has been on creating support material for skills development, self-advocacy and also gathering good support practice among universities and employers. During World Autism Awareness Week (29 March – 4 April) we want to give you a first…
Recently, Rachael Maun, Dr Marc Fabri and Dr Pip Trevorrow of Leeds Beckett University had a paper accepted for presentation at the Human-Computer-Interaction International Conference in Washington, DC, in July 2021 (http://2021.hci.international/). The paper presents a literature review investigating the suitability of participatory design methods when used with autistic adults. The IMAGE project uses a…
My name is Daniela, and I am currently pursuing my Global Health Masters degree in the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. Among the reasons for which I decided to join the IMAGE project, I would highlight my great interest in scientific research in the context of Mental Health and interventions for diverse populations. This theme is in…
My name is Monserrat Vásquez or Mona, and I’m a junior researcher and lecturer at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. Together with Mitzi, Daniela and Elena, we are working on the training material for career advisors. I am very happy to have joined this team and to contribute, share knowledge and raise awareness for more inclusive work…
Hi, I’m Rachael Maun, PhD student and researcher for IMAGE Autism. Since March of 2020 I have been doing all of my research from home and know how difficult this can be. I hope that you find the tips and articles included in this blogpost helpful! If you want to take part in my research,…
Dr Henri Pesonen from the University of Helsinki reflects on what it is like to conduct research to a given schedule and also publishing work as soon as the data is gathered and analysed. The entire IMAGE team has been enthusiastic about writing academic peer-reviewed papers ever since the beginning of the project in October…
Dr Mitzi Waltz from the Athena Institute at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam shares insights about the needs and wants expressed by these two key stakeholders during a series of workshops. As part of the IMAGE project, we had already asked careers advisors (CAs) and autistic students about their experiences of working together. This resulted in a…
My name is Alex, and I’m currently working on my Masters in Global Health at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. Previously I studied neuroscience and psychology, but after working in different facets of the mental health field back home, my interests turned to global mental health. After learning about the employment outcomes of autistic adults and…
It was the second week of March, and we had just returned from an IMAGE team meeting in Toulouse, fired up and excited about the co-creation workshop we had planned with careers advisors and students at Hogeschool Fontys in Eindhoven. Emails were flying back and forth—and then the first major COVID outbreak in the Netherlands…
Hey, my name is Chelsea Brüning and currently, I’m studying Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy in the master’s program at MSB Medical School Berlin. Due to some experiences I gained personally and non-personally, I’ve been trying to understand and find counter-measures against discrimination. In the last year of my bachelor’s program, I met Dr Timo Lorenz…
My name is Mona Algner and I am currently studying in the Master’s program Work and Organizational Psychology at Freie Universität Berlin. Ever since I came across the concept of neurodiversity and learning about the psychology of diversity and empowerment in general, my passion for research on these topics was sparked. This is one of the…
On June 27 and 28, 2019, the interdisciplinary Hello Diversity conference took place at the Freie Universität Berlin with lectures from research and practice on the topic of diversity. During the conference, Dr. Timo Lorenz gave a lecture on the topic of neurodiversity with a focus on autism and work. He is also a suitable…
For the third transnational partner meeting we came together at the beginning of March 2020 in Toulouse (following the first partner meeting in October 2019 in Leeds, and the second meeting in June 2019 in Helsinki). We were roughly at the half-way point of the project and had plenty of data generated in our research…
The IMAGE project has a new research assistant in Leeds. Meet Rachael Maun, who has been helping us with data collection and workshops in the project. ”I’m a postgraduate research student at Leeds Beckett University and I’m working as a research assistant for IMAGE Project. I previously worked in a specialist Autism Provision in a Primary…
On Tuesday 23 January 2020, IMAGE Project lead Marc Fabri delivered a lecture on ‘Supporting autistic students on their journey through higher education: small changes, big impact’. The invited talk is part of UCC’s Quercus Lecture Series which promotes excellence in academia, sports, the arts and active citizenship. Marc was invited by UCC’s Autism-Friendly University…
It’s a new year and our Co-creation workshops are at full swing in all our partner countries. We are gathering information for our 3 intellectual outputs. But what has happened before that? Let’s have a look at the last six months of 2019. Partner Meeting in Helsinki In June we had our second Transnational Partner…
During January and February 2020, we will be running a series of co-creation workshops in the UK and we invite you to take part in one of these workshops. Together we will design an employability toolkit for students, training materials for university staff and guides for employers. Please join us if you are currently: a…
In a blog post for Emerald, the international journal publishing house, Dr Marc Fabri from Leeds Beckett University shares his thoughts on using participatory design methods with autistic adults, and how this can help build and support a community. This is based on Marc’s experience from running the Autism&Uni project (www.autism-uni.org) which focused on the…
When designing software for autistic adults their needs, preferences and characteristics have to be considered. In this blog post Marc Fabri shares his thoughts on how to approach the design one of the key outputs from the IMAGE project: An employability toolkit for autistic students. We know that autistic people typically welcome structure, both in…
The Université of Toulouse brings together the main higher education and research institutions in Toulouse and its region (23 higher education institutions, 1 university hospital and 7 research organisations), located in 11 cities in 8 French departments. Its ambition is to enroll at the highest international level at the academic and scientific level by promoting…
The IMAGE project has a new research assisstant in Helsinki. Meet Minja Lahdelma, who has been helping us with the data collected in the project! ”Hey! I’m undergraduate student majoring in Special Education at the University of Helsinki and I’m working as a research assistant for IMAGE Project. Like Juuso, I have a background in…
Take part in our multi-national survey and help us identify what changes need to happen so that more autistic graduates can gain employment after completing their university studies. We would like to hear from you whether you are an autistic student or graduate, working at a university, or you are an employer. The survey is…
The University of Helsinki is the largest and oldest higher education institution in Finland. The University is an international community of approximately 33,000 students and 7,000 staff members including professors, university lecturers that teach and conduct research, as well as full time researchers. The university has been listed one of the world’s leading multidisciplinary academic…
The IMAGE project is recruiting a fully funded PhD student to be located at Leeds Beckett University, Leeds, United Kingdom. Application Deadline: 10 March 2019Start Date: 1 May 2019Duration: 3 yearsBursary: £14,777 per annum (pro-rata into 12 monthly payments)Fees: UK/EU Fees paid for a period of three years (see web link for non-EU). For full…
Vrije Universiteit (VU) Amsterdam is a large, urban science-focused university in the Netherlands. Dr Mitzi Waltz and Dr Elena Syurina work within the Athena Institute at the VU—an institute set up within the Faculty of Science to: increase academic and societal understanding of key factors in innovation processes enrich science with increased societal legitimacy and…
The MSB Medical School Berlin, Germany is a private, state-approved university in the city of Berlin offering undergraduate and graduate programs in various fields of education, with the strongest subject by far being Psychology. Diversity has been and continues to be an important topic at the MSB. Therefore, the MSB is excited for the project…
Leeds Beckett University (LBU) is a higher education institution in the North of England that provides access to education for a wide range of learners, promoting cultural awareness and diversity through our curriculum. LBU leads the IMAGE project, building on the experience and resources built up from the EU-funded Autism&Uni project (www.autism-uni.org), also led by…
Project partners met over two days for the official project kick-off in Leeds, UK. There were the usual administrative details to agree on, as well as how we would work and communicate as a team. We discussed project outcomes and how we will achieve them. Like any good project, we will start with a round…
Hello, my name is Marc Fabri and I am a lecturer and researcher at Leeds Beckett University, a university in the north of England. I am project leader for IMAGE. My first introduction to autism research was during PhD studies around 2002 when research colleagues explored the use of technology to support students on the…
