Role: Director of CRAE, and Professor of Autism Research.
Bio: Anna joined CRAE in 2013 and has been Director since November 2017. She began working in the field of autism research in 2004 after receiving a BA in Natural Sciences from the University of Cambridge.
She obtained a Masters in Human Communication Science and a Ph.D. in Developmental Science from University College London. Anna subsequently worked as a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, London and a Research Fellow at University College, Oxford before moving to CRAE.
Her findings have been published in the leading journals within the field, and she is regularly invited to present her research both nationally and internationally. In addition, Anna advises organisations regarding best practice for supporting autistic employees.
Research Summary: Her research looks at whether autistic people see, hear and feel things in a different way from others. In particular, she focuses on superior abilities in autism, specifically with respect to attention and perception within the condition, and how these might translate into practical benefits such as employment success.
Anna is committed to taking a participatory approach to research: working with autistic people, not on autistic people. She is also dedicated to ensuring that the findings of her research are translated into practical initiatives that can help improve the lives of autistic people. She has received a number of awards for her work, many that reflect this emphasis on research engagement and impact. These include an ESRC Celebrating Impact Prize for Outstanding Impact in Business and Enterprise (Finalist 2020) and a UCL Knowledge Exchange Champions Award (2016).
Current research and activities: Among others, and her ongoing work as Director, Anna’s current research projects include working with autistic people in the family justice system, investigating autistic people’s greater capacity to detect sound and ways to promote autistic employment.
List of relevant web presences : Twitter | LinkedIn | Google Scholar | ResearchGate | ORCID
Five most recent publications:
Romualdez, A. M., Heasman, B., Walker, Z., Davies, J., & Remington, A. (2021). “People Might Understand Me Better”: Diagnostic Disclosure Experiences of Autistic Individuals in the Workplace. Autism in Adulthood (online ahead of print). https://doi.org/10.1089/aut.2020.0063
Caruana, N., White, R. C., & Remington, A. (2021). Autistic traits and loneliness in autism are associated with increased tendencies to anthropomorphise. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1177/17470218211005694
McMillion, A., Van Herwegen, J., Johnson, A., Monteiro, J., Cronin, A. J., & Remington, A. (2021). Dental experiences of a group of autistic adults based in the United Kingdom. Special care in dentistry : official publication of the American Association of Hospital Dentists, the Academy of Dentistry for the Handicapped, and the American Society for Geriatric Dentistry, 10.1111/scd.12583. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1111/scd.12583
Buckley, E., Pellicano, E., & Remington, A. (2021). Higher levels of autistic traits associated with lower levels of self-efficacy and wellbeing for performing arts professionals. PloS one, 16(2), e0246423. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0246423
Brinkert, J., & Remington, A. (2020). Making sense of the perceptual capacities in autistic and non-autistic adults. Autism. https://doi.org/10.1177/1362361320922640