Campus Directory

Division Social Sciences Division

Department/ College/ Unit Psychology Department

Title Professor

Affiliation Faculty

Faculty Type Regular Faculty

Primary Office Location Social Sciences 2
313

Office Hours for Students/ Office Hours (Fall 2026) check syllabus or contact via email

Mail Stop Psychology Faculty Services

Biography, Education and Training

B.S., M.S., Ph.D., Dalhousie University

Selected Publications

• Akhtar, N., & Dinishak, J. (2024). Short report: Can autie-biographies influence non-autistic readers’ views of autism and autistic people? Neurodiversity, 2.

• Dinishak, J., & Akhtar, N. (2023). Integrating autistic perspectives into autism science: A role for autistic autobiographies. Autism, 27(3), 578-587.

• Dinishak, J., Akhtar, N., & Frymiare, J. (2022). Still infantilizing autism? A replication and extension of Stevenson et al. (2011). Autism in Adulthood, 4(3), 224-232.

• Lewin, N., & Akhtar, N. (2021). Neurodiversity and deficit perspectives in The Washington Post’s coverage of autism. Disability & Society, 36(5), 812-833.

• Akhtar, N., & Jaswal, V. K. (2020). Stretching the social: Broadening the behavioral indicators of sociality. Child Development Perspectives, 14(1), 28-33. 

• Jaswal, V. K., & Akhtar, N. (2019a). Being versus appearing socially interested: Challenging assumptions about social motivation in autism. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 42, e82: 1-73.

• Jaswal, V. K., & Akhtar, N. (2019b). Supporting autistic flourishing. Behavioral and Brain Sciences.

Courses Psych 10: Introduction to Developmental Psychology
Psych 104: Development in Infancy
Psych 244A: Cognitive and Language Development
Psych 119Q: Perspectives on Autism