Dr Sarah Marsden

Research Associate

Dr Sarah Marsden is a postdoctoral research associate at the Autism Research Centre working within the suicide prevention team on the Bereaved Voices project.

Sarah was awarded her PhD in Mental Health at Lancaster University in 2023, and her doctoral research project explored the lived experience of self-harm as described by autistic adults in online discussion forums. The majority of Sarah’s research has focused upon suicide and self-harm in autism and learning disabilities, and her research interests extend to the wider contexts of mental health, social and health inequalities, and online interactions.

Driven by a personal connection to autism, Sarah approaches research through the neurodiversity paradigm, valuing the lived experience and qualitative methods as a way to achieve this.