dr. K. (Kirstin) Greaves-Lord

Dr. Kirstin Greaves-Lord was originally trained as a neuro-linguist. She has been involved in Autism Research since 2001. She obtained her PhD in 2007 at Erasmus MC with a theses concerning stress physiology and psychological problems. After this, she did simultaneous post docs on stress physiology and addiction and autism phenotypes. In 2009, she became an Assistant Professor at Erasmus MC and established a research group concerning Autism Assessment and Interventions. In 2012, her research group extended to Yulius, to expand societal impact. This joint research group examined developmental pathways from childhood to adolescence in autistic youth, investigating autistic traits as well as co-occurring emotional and behavioral problems and psycho-sexual health. Also, factor predicting positive outcome were examined, which translated to the development of intervention programs facilitating teenage transitions (i.e. primary to secondary school, making and maintaining friendships, building intimate partner relations and obtaining a career). In 2014, she co-founded the Academic Workplace Autism (AWA), an (inter)national endeavor to improve the societal inclusion of autistic people, further bridging research with practice. Within this interdisciplinary collaboration network she co-created several interventions involving autistic experts by experience. Since 2018 she moved to the North of the Netherlands, where currently is a lead researcher at Jonx and an Assistant Professor at the Department of Psychology at the University of Groningen. Within the AWA she is co-creating an integrative approach to improve meaning and of life and wellbeing of autistic people and their near ones the Lifespan Curriculum. Moreover, she investigates how equal co-creation between experts by experiences and experts by profession can be optimized. She has published over a hundred peer reviewed (inter)national articles, book chapters and reports to government and has supervised over 70 Master and 10 PhD students.