CIVICA Public Lecture | NEWrodiversity: A Unifying Thread

“NEWrodiversity: A Unifying Thread” invites participants to reconsider how neurodiversity is understood within education. Focusing on dyslexia while acknowledging its connections to other neurodivergent profiles, the session examines how learning differences develop, why they overlap, and how a strengths-based, root-cause framework can reshape conversations around inclusion, communication and academic performance.

Bringing together historical and conceptual perspectives, lived experience insights, and practical reflections for teaching and learning, this public lecture creates space for thoughtful dialogue and exchange.

Date: April 22, 2026

Time: 5:00 PM CET

Speakers

- Monika Baár: Monika Baár is Professor in the History of East-Central and South-Eastern Europe at the European University Institute, Florence, and holds a joint chair between the History Department and the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies. She currently serves as Dean of Graduate Studies at the EUI. Her research focuses on the history of disability in modern and contemporary Europe in a global context, with particular attention to disability as a social movement, disability in memory and heritage studies, and the history of service animals. Between 2017 and 2022, she held the ERC Consolidator Grant Rethinking Disability: the Global Impact of the International Year of Disabled Persons (1981) in a Historical Perspective.

- Natália Nagyné Nyikes: Natália Nagyné Nyikes holds an MA in English Language and Literature from Eötvös Loránd University of Budapest, Hungary. She has taught English as a foreign language in language schools, secondary schools and universities. She is currently the Disability Rights Officer at the Office of the Pro-Rector for Teaching and Learning at Central European University, Vienna, where she combines her professional experience with her research interest in pedagogy. She is completing her PhD in language pedagogy at Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest. Her main research interest is teaching foreign languages to learners with special educational needs.

- Dolores Gage: Dolores Gage is a Cambridge graduate, IE Executive MBA alumna, and holds an MEd in International Education and Bilingualism, as well as the IB Certificate in Teaching and Learning. She is a trilingual Davis® Facilitator and Presenter based in Madrid, working with neurodivergent children and adults through one-to-one programmes, as well as with families and educators. Her work focuses on developing clearer, more coherent and strengths-based understandings of neurodiversity, and translating complex neurodevelopmental concepts into practical insights for teaching, learning and living.

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