Laura Hetrick received her Ph.D. from The Ohio State University in 2010 and immediately began working at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She is an associate professor of art education and also serves as their Graduate Coordinator. Her doctoral scholarship concerned itself with the emergent identity formation of art student teachers: the knowledge and cultural systems through which art teaching identity conceives itself, and the ontological consequences that evolve from those identifications. Hetrick is the co-editor of the journal Visual Arts Research, a publication providing a forum for historical, critical, cultural, psychological, educational, and conceptual research in visual arts and aesthetic education. To date, Hetrick has published one edited book, 20 peer-reviewed articles and given over 30 conference presentations and invited lectures. She is consistently invited/accepted to present at conferences, workshops and panels in the U.S., and internationally, including Canada, Finland, Jamaica, Jordan, South Korea, Taiwan, and Turkey.

Currently, she is affiliated with the Autism Self Advocacy Network; Carl R Woese Institute for Genomic Biology; Center for Social and Behavioral Science; National Art Education Association; the Disability Studies in Art Education Special Interest Group; the Illinois Art Education Association; and the International Society for Education through Art, or InSEA, which is an affiliate of The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. Additionally, she is affiliated with the United States Society for Education through Art.

Education

• Ph.D., The Ohio State University, 2010

• 2024-current: Affiliate Member of the Center for Social and Behavioral Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

• 2024-current: Affiliate Member of the Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology, in the Gene Networks in Neural and Developmental Plasticity Research Theme, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

• 2024: UIUC Autism Research Panel with Commentator Temple Grandin, [initiated, moderated, presented] with Temple Grandin, Nien-Pei Tsai, Marie Channell, Amy Cohen, Tracey Wszalek, and Stephanie Ceman, Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology, University of Illinois. 4-17-24

• 2024-2025: Humanities Teaching Release Time. Campus Research Board. University of Illinois.

• 2024: Humanities Summer Faculty Fellow. Humanities Research Institute. University of Illinois.

• 2024: Public Engagement Grant, $3358 for Autism Research Panel with Temple Grandin, Beckman Institute for Advanced Science & Technology, University of Illinois

• 2023-2024: Public Voices Fellow, University of Illinois System

• 2019: College of Fine & Applied Arts (FAA) Faculty Award for Excellence in Service, 2018-2019. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

• 2014: FAA Creative Research Award, $8000 Grant. College of Fine & Applied Arts, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

• 2011-current: Teachers Ranked as Excellent on Campus, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, all semesters. *Some semesters were ranked as Outstanding.

• 2011: Elliot Eisner Doctoral Research Award in Art Education; Runner-Up, National Art Education Association, Reston, VA.

Research interests:

• Autistic identity and autistic lived experience

• Hermeneutic phenomenology & auto-ethnography

• Teacher identity/subjectivity; identity development through artmaking

• Fandoms/fan art as philosophical constructs

As a late-in-life diagnosed autistic professor, Hetrick is focusing mainly on autistic identity and the autistic lived experience. Currently, she is working with an interdisciplinary team of scientists including a geneticist/cell & developmental biologist and a neuroscientist to explore and understand various autistic co-occurring conditions (formerly known as co-morbidities) from a neurogenetic, molecular and cellular level, and as a result, advocate for improved medical care, prevention, and maintenance for autistic adults. Using her phenomenological lived experience as the social model of disability context for the medical model of disability findings, Hetrick hopes to address the epistemic injustice that often occurs when researching ON autistics, not WITH autistics. In the near future, at the Beckman Institute, she hopes to research such issues as 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.