> Reframing Autism: A Historical Perspective on Shifting Models and Meanings
This PhD project examines the historical and philosophical development of autism as a diagnostic category, focusing on how concepts such as autism, ASD, and neurodiversity emerge through the interplay between lived experience, medical knowledge, and broader social representations. Rather than treating these categories as fixed entities, the project approaches them as dynamic constructs shaped through ongoing interactions between patients, clinicians, and societal frameworks.
By analysing the co-production of psychiatric knowledge and social context, the project raises important epistemological questions about how diagnostic categories are constructed and transformed over time. In particular, it explores how patient experiences are incorporated into (or excluded from) medical frameworks, and how this affects both research practices and clinical outcomes.
Within the TRANSCEND project, this work contributes primarily to improving patient outcomes, integrating patient perspectives into research design and critically examining the assumptions underlying existing diagnostic categories. By providing a historically and philosophically informed analysis of autism, the project encourages patient-centred approaches to diagnosis and treatment, in line with TRANSCEND’s goal of improving the alignment between biomedical research and patient needs.
This project will be primarily hosted at the University of Bordeaux-Montaigne with Steeves Demazeux, and secondments are planned with Kaat Alaert at KU Leuven and Lara Keuck at UNIBI.
Veronica Fantini
My PhD project examines the historical and conceptual development of autism, focusing on how diagnostic categories are shaped through the interaction between medical knowledge, lived experience, and social context. The central question guiding my research is how psychiatric classifications emerge through this interplay, and how they can be critically evaluated to better reflect patients’ experiences and needs.
I have a background in philosophy and theology, and I joined TRANSCEND out of a strong commitment to improving the situation of those within psychiatric care and to ensuring that patients’ voices are more fully heard in research. I am particularly motivated by the opportunity to engage in genuinely interdisciplinary collaboration with researchers working in clinical and scientific contexts, and to contribute to forms of knowledge that meaningfully benefit patients.
