About Esperanza
PhD Student, University of California San Francisco
Esperanza is a 3rd year Ph.D. student in the sociology program at UCSF. Through this doctoral program Esperanza has gained expertise with qualitative research methods and sociological theory. Inspired by her own journey of self-discovery, Esperanza research interest encompasses the experiences of neurodivergent adults and how they come to disclose and embrace their neurological differences. In addition to research, Esperanza is an artist and is currently training to be a digital storyteller facilitator.
About Esperanza’s project
Exploring Frameworks of Neurodiversity in the Digital Era
This project seeks to use digital humanities tools to understand how Autism is de/pathologized by two different groups. Specifically this project seeks to answer the questions of (1) how clinical professionals create and reinforce a pathological understanding of Autism, and (2) to understand how Autistic community members assert their knowledge expertise and build depathological understandings of their experiences. To address these questions online and archived video footage will be analyzed using digital tools such as Elan. These data sources include video footage from UCLA clinician Ivar Lovaas who developed behavioral studies of Autistic children (1988; 1987;1968). As well as the online videos created by disabled advocate and Autistic blogger, Mel Baggs, such as “In My Language” and “About Being Considered [R-Word]”. I will be using a grounded theory approach to analyze the visual and textual elements of the data sources to inductively detect emerging themes.