About the researcher

Hello, I’m Maddy Thompson, a researcher in Human Geography at Keele University in the UK, who has ADHD. I received my PhD in 2019 at Newcastle University in Human Geography.

Having struggled with a variety of things throughout my life, that could never quite be fully explained, I was recently (August 2020) diagnosed with ADHD.

As a researcher with interests in the geographies of health – a field that effectively tries to understand the relationship between place and health – I began reading about ADHD. I quickly became intrigued as to why, for women like me, my symptoms were unrecognised and misdiagnosed for so long. But, although I kept reading that women are more likely to report struggling more at home, as well as turning to online spaces for support, I was struck that no one has really researched this.

And so, with an idea, an 18 hour stretch of ‘hyperfocused’ proposal writing (when I really should have been doing something else), and a bit of luck, I’ve been able to get some funding to research, and, hopefully help make more visible, the experiences of women with ADHD in the home and online.

If you want to see any of my other research, please visit my Google Scholar Page or my staff page at Keele University. You can also follow me on Twitter or LinkedIn.