Katie Maras

Katie is a Senior Lecturer in Psychology and Deputy Director of the Centre for Applied Autism Research (CAAR) at Bath. Her current work, funded by the ESRC, focuses on how autistic adults think and communicate differently, and what adaptations service providers can make to accommodate these differences. Katie is particularly interested in how autistic people fare when they are interviewed by the police as a witness or as a suspect of an alleged offence. For example, her research shows that current police interviewing techniques do not elicit ‘best evidence’ from autistic individuals and that interviewers need to adapt their questioning styles in order to obtain detailed, relevant and accurate information about an event from them. She is currently extending this work under an ESRC ‘Future Research Leaders’ grant to explore how employers and healthcare professionals can adapt the ways that they communicate with autistic job seekers and patients. Katie works with a range of policy makers and end-user organisations, including a close collaboration with Avon and Somerset police.