Brian has just wrapped up his own ESRC doctorate as at ACER, the University of Birmingham’s Autism Centre for Education and Research.  There, Brian developed the first framework for Specialist (Autism) Mentoring in UK HEIs. To do so, autistic mentees asked questions for mentors to answer in diaries and then an autistic-majority forum of master mentors pointed him in the right direction. Mentors can use the framework to reflect on how they can develop their own practice. By thinking about mentoring as more than becoming part of a new role – but as a means of changing cultures for the better – mentoring in many other places might be improved.

He previously mentored autistic students at Royal Holloway, University of London where, over the last decade, he has had the pleasure of regular meetings with many brilliant students as they journeyed through their university life. Before then, he worked in an autism inclusion unit in a primary school, was a child minder and dressed as a pirate, and – last century – was Head of RE in a secondary modern.

For fun he creates quiet by keeping bees. And noise by playing the ukulele badly.