Managing Anxiety in Autism: Going Full Improv with Dr. Nathan Keates

A chance meeting on 'X' has DDA chatting with Dr. Nathan Keates, in London, England about his Ph.D. thesis that postulates improv theatre has a benefit for autistic people when it comes to managing anxiety and more. 

 

TRANSCRIPT

 

Managing Anxiety in Autism: Going Full Improv with Dr. Nathan Keates

 

00:06

Welcome again to DDA's Encouraging Abilities podcast. I'm your host, DDA Communications Manager, Evan Kelly. In today's episode, we are talking about autistic people. And through the power of social media, I managed to contact Nathan Keates. They're a lecturer and early careers researcher in the field of critical autism studies and the University of Sunderland in London about their PhD thesis. Now this is kind of cool. It's the power of social media again. Through a tweet, I'm not sure if we can still.

 

00:36

call it that, through an X, I'm not sure now. So he had posted a picture of themselves proudly holding the copy of their PhD thesis. Now, the thesis completed at the University of Kent's called Going Full Autistic in Improv, Reduction in Anxiety and Other Benefits. And that's exactly what it says. Improv as an improv comedy and how that might positively affect anxiety and other autistic valued benefits.

 

01:05

not only is Nathan a scholar, but they also previously worked in theatre. So Nathan, thank you again for taking the time to join me today from across the pond. That's alright, you're very much welcome. I enjoy talking about this. Now that's great. So just right off the top here, tell me a little bit about yourself. Well, as you said, I'm a lecturer at the University of Sunderland in London.

 

01:32

That's in health and social care. As you've said, my research and such is in critical autism studies and I have previously taught that at the University of Kent where I was doing my PhD. Previous to that, I've got a background in theatre so I have taught improv for quite some time, probably going on 17 years. So the PhD was basically trying to stitch my life together.

 

02:00

in an interesting way. So in 2007 I went to the United States of America and I talked some improv in a summer camp there and that was a wonderful experience, so wonderful that I thought I had to do more with it. And it took me a decade or so to look back to academia to start stitching things together but between that period I was practically doing stuff.

 

02:30

So that's a little about me. If that can be classified as little, I don't know. Theater, is that your first love before you got into the higher learning about autistic people and stuff? Yes, for sure. My aspiration as a child was to get into acting, and I did that until

 

02:58

Well, in part, I'm still doing it, but it's no longer my profession. Just because the way life turns, I found academia and I actually really enjoy research and I really enjoy teaching. And these are what I can do in a higher education institution. And so you got a PhD now, so we can call you a Doctor of Philosophy, which is quite cool.

 

03:27

Yes. You would have started, you got your first degree, then probably a master's and then a PhD. How long has this taken you to get this far? Very long because I didn't have that inclination to be in academia. I started in university in 2005, and then I

 

03:56

Then I found out I like teaching, so I then went back to university and I did a PGCE, so that's qualification for teaching, and then a few years later than that I then started thinking about how I could piece elements of my life together and I went back to university for masters. Then the idea of the masters was to go to the PhD. I did take a year break between the

 

04:25

but that was just to make sure the PhD was set up and I could actually get what I