Higher Hopes Podcast: The Neurodiversity Paradigm in Higher Education

The Higher Hopes Podcast is hosted by Ebe Ganon, community engagement and inclusion practitioner, student advocate, and someone who's spent years navigating universities as both an insider and outsider. Ebe brings lived experience as a neurodivergent person with disability, professional expertise across government and education sectors, and an unshakeable belief that universities can do better.

In this podcast, (Episode 6) The Neurodiversity Paradigm in Higher Education, Ebe Ganon shares the recording of her November 2025 ADCET webinar on the neurodiversity paradigm. If one of your 2026 resolutions is to improve your neurodiversity confidence or to learn a new inclusion skill, this episode is a great place to start!

It covers the foundations and principles of the neurodiversity paradigm as articulated by Dr Nick Walker and Sonny Jane Wise, contrasting it with the pathology paradigm that currently dominates university support systems.

Ebe explains key concepts including neurodiversity, neurodivergent identity, neuronormativity, biocertification and biopower, and explores what these mean for how universities structure support, assessment and inclusion. These ideas are applicable beyond higher education, so if you’re a public servant, a health professional, a student, or just someone looking to learn something new, this episode is for you.

If you prefer to read rather than listen, you can read Paradigm washing: when universities adopt our language but not neurodivergent liberation, which Ebe wrote after the webinar in November 2025.

The episode also includes Q&A with ADCET’s Rebecca Morris, addressing questions about assessment design, the role of diagnosis, and how to balance institutional requirements with paradigm shift. If you have a question after listening, you can submit it and have it answered in Ebe's upcoming 2026 blog series, “Ask me anything: neuroaffirming practice in higher education".