University of Melbourne Events Calendar

For too long, neurodivergent women have been missing from the stories we tell about neurodivergence in research, education and popular culture.

That is changing.

The final Dean’s Lecture for 2026 brings together internationally recognised autistic actor and community advocate Chloé Hayden with three of the Faculty of Education’s leading neurodivergent researchers – Associate Professor Erin Hoare, Dr Sarah Timperley and Associate Research Fellow Jess Rowlings – to explore what happens when neurodivergent women are authors of knowledge and agents of change, using research and lived experience to challenge barriers and reshape how society understands neurodivergence.
From Chloe’s advocacy and work amplifying neurodivergent voices to research transforming how education systems understand and support neurodivergent women, the conversation will ask what becomes possible when lived experience is recognised as expertise.

Registration is essential.
If you are unable to attend in person, a ticket option is available to receive the recording of this presentation

ACCESSIBILITY
If you have any support requirements in order to participate fully, please let us know via educationevents@unimelb.edu.au to ensure that we can arrange any reasonable adjustments.

Join us to hear from Professor Drew Weissman, Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania. Professor Weissman is a renowned immunologist and clinician-scientist whose discoveries led to the development of COVID-19 mRNA vaccines for which he was jointly awarded the 2023 Nobel Prize.

Following the lecture, Professor Weissman will be joined in conversation by Laureate Professor Peter Doherty AC and Professor Sharon Lewin AO, to reflect on the importance of collaboration in the health and medical sciences and how the landscape has changed in the thirty years since the awarding of Professor Doherty’s Nobel Prize in 1996.