My name is Nic Subtirelu. I’m a public scholar. I have learned, as an adult, that I am neurodivergent (specifically, I’m autistic). After I learned this, I began reading, thinking, and writing about neurodivergence and neuronormativity.
Through reading about others’ experiences and reflecting on my own, I have gained tools to understand my experience and express it to others. I’ve experienced the liberatory potential of theory, and I wish to share it with others. The purpose of my scholarship then is to provide conceptual and literacy tools for people to understand and oppose neuronormativity.
I was formally trained in Applied Linguistics (PhD, Georgia State University). My formal education gave me a set of theoretical and methodological tools to explore language, discourse, power, education, knowledge, and society. It made me particularly sensitive to the ways that humans’ meaning making practices can be seen as reflections of larger social structures such as gender or race. In the past, my published academic research focused on exploring how both race and language background marginalized people in institutions of higher education. I also ran a blog with language-related public scholarship called linguistic pulse.
Today, I produce scholarship that is free from paywalls and from neuronormative censorship.