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Valuing diversity in our communities

The Journal of Intellectual Disabilities, along with other titles published by SAGE, is committed to equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI). As editors, we have been asked to raise awareness of and to seek ways of ensuring that EDI is enacted in all aspects of our work and manifested in our editorial boards, peer review and author base. I will be engaging with the Journal’s community over the coming months to see how we can best achieve this, but, as a starting point, I have asked my colleague, Jessica Mannion, to join me in starting a discussion about diversity in academia and writing. Diversity is a strange concept as it seems that we apply its definition to specific groups of people (people with intellectual disabilities, for example). We know, however, that humanity is diverse and that each person carries with her/him/them a wonderful uniqueness. Indeed, that uniqueness is a meld of many diversities. As academics, Jess and I each wanted to reflect on the challenges that some differences can pose in the world of academia, coming from our experiences of neurodiversity and obsessive compulsion. The voices of neuro-diverse academics are often under-represented (Brown and Leigh, 2018), and, although the numbers of disclosures are increasing, these are mainly within the student population. Neuro-diverse academics often find themselves faced with internalised ableism in a competitive culture based on productivity, where they are commonly viewed and treated differently (Brown and Leigh, 2018). This too is the situation for those whose who experience compulsion, as they seek to achieve, while also trying to manage the inevitable stress that builds inside them. Management of this is achieved through the adoption of masks of competency which ensure conformity to the norm while covering up the self-doubt and internalised stigma that festers within. Goffman (1959) suggested that we wear masks, to suit our environment. These marks are worn to supress parts of our identity, to avoid stigma and shame, to be taken seriously by others and to belong. We pretend to be ‘normal’ so our social behaviours match those of our neuro-typical colleagues.