Sarah Vortman

Sarah is an Autistic arts-based researcher, writer, and practicing visual artist. She is currently undertaking a PhD at the University of the Sunshine Coast (UniSC), exploring the lived experiences of late-diagnosed Autistic women through art-making, storying, and collective creative practice. Her research privileges Autistic voice, agency, and creativity, and also explores her own lived experience as an Autistic researcher within academia, critically examining and challenging neuronormative structures.

Sarah experiments with embodied and sensory visual methodologies, foregrounding art-making as an alive and reflective process, and creative practice as a site of meaning-making and knowledge production, inviting theory to emerge from lived, storied, and multimodal expressions. Through this approach, she honours diverse ways of being, knowing, and connecting, that challenge the dominant medicalised and deficit narratives that have long marginalised Autistic people.

Alongside her research, Sarah is an active advocate for neurodivergent rights, inclusion, and accessibility. She serves on the Board of the Autistic Self Advocacy Network of Australia and New Zealand (ASAN AUNZ) and founded UniSC’s first Neurodivergent Collective, seeking to foster community, representation, and systemic change within university spaces.

Through creative practice and inquiry, critical scholarship, and lived experience, Sarah's work seeks to amplify the lived realities, creativity, and contributions of Autistic women—offering a deeper understanding of how Autistic lives are seen, understood, and valued— within research, academia, the arts, and the broader community.