Dr Samantha Friedman is a Lecturer in Applied Psychology in Moray House School of Education and Sport at the University of Edinburgh. Samantha completed her undergraduate degree in Special Education and History at Elon University in 2018. She then received a Fulbright grant to study in the UK; through her Fulbright, she earned her MSc Autism from the University of Strathclyde. She went on to undertake a PhD in Psychology at the Centre for Family Research at the University of Cambridge. Her PhD, which she completed in 2022, focused on nature's role in supporting wellbeing in several understudied contexts: in young children during the Covid-19 pandemic and in autistic people across the life course. Within Moray House, Samantha is a member of the Developmental Psychology in Education research group.
Research interests:
My research interests broadly encompass autism, nature, and wellbeing, both in educational contexts and across the life course. More specifically, my work takes a neurodiversity paradigm perspective to explore how autistic people experience and connect with nature and the impact this might have on wellbeing and on sensory needs. I am interested in the application of critical disability studies, and other critical perspectives, to ecopsychology. My research also focuses on how teachers and other practitioners can support autistic and otherwise neurodivergent young people through nature-based learning.