Research Associate

The emphases of Elizabeth’s postdoctoral work will be two-fold: (1) continuing academic research on adolescent and adult outcomes of autistic individuals and (2) translating the research outputs from the Autism Research Centre into policy documents to promote change for autistic people. On the research side, Elizabeth will continue to explore the work she started in her PhD investigating the health and healthcare of autistic adults, but will also expand her research focuses to consider the employment and educational outcomes of autistic individuals. To this end, she will utilize anonymized data from the National Pupil Database to consider the likelihood that children who had disabilities identified during primary school would later be classified as ‘NEET’ (Not in Employment, Education, or Training). This work has been funded by Queen Anne’s Gate.

Elizabeth is also a Rokos PDRA Fellow at Queens’ College, mentors undergraduate and postgraduate students with disabilities as they complete their degrees at the University of Cambridge, and supervises students in Developmental Psychology (PBS 6) and in the Psychology sections of the Neurobiology and Human Behavior course in Medicine (MedST 1B NHB).

Her PhD, which was also conducted at the ARC, was supervised by Dr. Carrie Allison and Prof. Sir Simon Baron-Cohen. It focused on the physical health and healthcare of autistic individuals and their first degree relatives. More specifically, Elizabeth’s PhD work spanned from epidemiological investigations of the prevalence of co-occurring chronic physical health conditions among autistic individuals (including investigating a potential association with cancer) to better understanding the lifestyle behaviors, sexual health, sexual orientation, gender identity, substance use, and healthcare quality of autistic adults. Prior to this, she received a BA in Linguistics and Dramatic Arts at the University of Southern California (USC), and took part in the Post baccalaureate Premedical program at USC.

Selected Publications

• Understanding the substance use of autistic adults: a mixed methods approach, The Lancet (2021), E Weir, C Allison, S Baron-Cohen
• Medical symptoms and conditions in autistic women, Autism (2021), T Simantov, A Pohl, A Tsompanidis, E Weir, M V Lombardo, A Ruigrok, P Smith, C Allison, S Baron-Cohen, F Uzefovsky
• The sexual health, orientation, and activity of autistic adolescents and adults, Autism Research (2021), E Weir, C Allison, S Baron-Cohen
• Identifying and managing autism in adults, Prescriber (2020), E Weir, C Allison, S Baron-Cohen
• Autism in children: improving screening, diagnosis and support, Prescriber (2020), E Weir, C Allison, S Baron-Cohen

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