Antonia Aluko

Antonia is enthusiastic about advocacy and unmasking of autistic people in mental health spaces. At a young age she encountered the obstacles involved with being a carer when a loved one was admitted to an in-patient mental health ward. From this experience, she began to question how processes within the NHS could be improved and done differently to support patients experiencing mental health difficulties holistically and with intersectionality in mind. Antonia is currently aiming to do this through her advisory position to help shape wards into more accessible and open spaces for autistic people.

Being late diagnosed as autistic in her early 20s, Antonia found that her experiences as a Black queer autistic woman really impacted her life and how she navigated social and academic spaces. She wanted to find ways to advocate and educate others on how the autistic experience is shaped by other aspects of identity e.g. ethnicity, gender, sexuality, religion, age, etc.

Antonia is passionate about making change in every area of life for those from minority backgrounds. Apart from her work at NdC, she is pursuing a PhD using intersectionality as a framework to investigate the nature of identity and systems of oppression within Roman Literature. In her spare time, she enjoys reading terribly written romance novels, watching anime, and going on trips with her friends.