Dr Oli Meredith

This session explores supporting ADHD students to thrive in higher education.

Dr Oli Meredith will reflect on how compassionate pedagogy has helped her ADHD and other neurodivergent students thrive.

HDR student Robyn Jarman will discuss workplace learning for neurodivergent students. And a panel with honours students Sophie Clifton and Natalie Tolhurst and colleague Associate Professor Sarah Verdon will share their experiences of ADHD at school and university, including what has helped them and the complex barriers they have faced.

Bio

Dr Oli Meredith (she/they) is a first-generation Australian, queer, neurodivergent (AuDHD) public health researcher at Charles Sturt University on Ngunnawal Country.

She leads the ADHD Hiding or Thriving study with a collaborative cross-institutional team of ADHD researchers exploring the lived experiences of women and gender-diverse people and is also the founder of the ADHD Community Healing Project, which harnesses collective creativity and lived experience to reframe and deepen understandings of ADHD and neurodivergence. 

Oli is passionate about inclusive and creative approaches to education at all levels and argues that society short-changes itself by perpetuating barriers to neurodivergent learners. Viewing neurodiversity (distinct from neurodivergence) as a powerful lens on cognitive diversity in society, Oli grounds her research in community-led knowledge and the conviction that health research becomes transformative only when it honours complexity, connection, and care.