There is a growing commitment and intent across Australia’s autism research sector to coproduction and co-leadership with autistic people. However, evidence from both the literature and lived experience indicates that these commitments are not yet consistently realised in practice. Autistic people continue to report limited influence, barriers to research leadership, and experiences of tokenism; while researchers face systems, processes, and expectations that make meaningful collaboration difficult to achieve.

This work was undertaken to better understand the barriers/challenges and enablers/solutions to meaningful research collaboration, and to identify what needs to change, to enable autistic coproduction and co-leadership to become standard, supported, and sustained.

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