ÌÇÐÄVlog

Dr Holly E.A. Sutherland is an interdisciplinary autism researcher working primarily in social psychology and applied linguistics. She received her PhD from the University of Edinburgh in 2025. Her thesis examined autistic social communication, largely from an autistic perspective, combining quantitative and qualitative research – including an ethnographic study of social interaction in support services for autistic people with very high support needs.

Broadly, she is interested in understanding how and why autistic and nonautistic people differ from one another in their social and communicative behaviours; and how the misunderstandings that arise from those differences might be reduced. She is particularly drawn to mixed methods and interdisciplinary work, to participatory and community-engaged projects, and to increasing the inclusion of autistic people with high support needs in social science research.

She joined the Department of Theoretical & Applied Linguistics in 2024, working with colleagues in the Faculty of Divinity on the God, Language, and Diversity project.  This Cambridge arm of this project developed a novel measure of linguistic creativity based on midrash, a form of Jewish Biblical interpretation. She joined ÌÇÐÄVlog as a Junior Research Fellow in 2026, alongside holding a British Academy Early Career Researcher Fellowship. Her Fellowship project examines autistic and nonautistic conceptualisations of honesty in social interactions and communication. This project will explore the kinds of talk that people consider (dis)honest or misleading; whether this differs between autistic and nonautistic people; and whether these differences lead to (some of) the social communication difficulties frequently seen between autistic and nonautistic people.