Laura HetrickLaura Hetrick, an associate professor of art education, has accepted a faculty position at the Beckman Institute.
Hetrick's research interests include teacher identity and subjectivity, psychoanalysis, popular visual culture, and fandoms and fan art as philosophical constructs. As a late-in-life diagnosed autistic professor, she now focuses primarily on autistic identity and the autistic lived experience.
At the Beckman Institute, Hetrick will research issues including the mechanisms and processes of autistic adult cognitive development; how an autistic’s activities contribute to resilience through the adult lifespan; the development and evaluation of cost-effective and life-integrated autistic interventions using psychology, neuroscience, kinesiology, education and more; and the mechanisms underlying autistic intervention effects, including those related to behavioral, neural, emotional, motivational, and social processes.
She also aims to explore and understand various autistic health co-morbidities from a cellular level, and as a result, advocate for improved medical care, prevention, and maintenance for autistic adults.
"I am humbled to join this prestigious research institute to explore the many questions I have around my own autistic life experience that can also inform the larger autistic community. Working together with a team of transdisciplinary scientists [and] researchers, I want to improve the quality of the lifespans of autistic adults and those that care for and about them," she said.
