Externalising and Organising Your Research Brain

Research thinking is seldom tidy. Ideas arrive out of sequence, connections appear from unexpected directions, and the sheer volume of material you're holding in your head at any one time makes progress difficult. For neurodivergent researchers, this challenge is often amplified, as your working memory is already managing additional demands.

Led by a facilitator with her own lived experience of working as an AuDHD researcher, this workshop offers practical techniques for getting your research thinking out of your head and into a form you can actually work with. We'll explore visual organisation methods — including mind maps, concept maps, and affinity maps — and look at how to use them as a bridge towards written structure. Throughout, we'll consider how different neurodivergent traits affect the way we process and organise information, and what that means for finding approaches that genuinely work for you.

Here’s what we'll cover:
•    Why externalising your thinking reduces cognitive load and makes progress visible. 
•    Visual organisation methods and how to choose between them.
•    Translating a visual map into a written structure.
•    How different neurodivergent traits affect information processing (group discussion).

By the end of the session, you'll have:
•    Created a visual map of part of your research. 
•    Translated that map into the beginnings of a written structure.
•    Identified approaches that fit your individual thinking style.

Dr Catherine Pope knows what it's like to navigate a PhD — and academic life more broadly — as a neurodivergent researcher. Diagnosed as autistic with ADHD (AuDHD) at the age of 49, she has first-hand experience of creating strategies that work with your brain rather than against it.

Catherine was awarded her PhD by the University of Sussex in 2014, and has since coached and trained thousands of researchers at every stage of their academic career. She has published widely on her favourite subjects of technology and Victorian literature. You can find out more at www.catherinepope.com.