Centre member Dr Debora Gottardello has received a prestigious European Research Council Starting Grant of €1.5 million. Dr Gottardello, a Lecturer in the University of Edinburgh Business School, will lead the five-year project, REWIRE: Regulating Workplace Inclusion for Neurodivergent Employees. The project will investigate how workplace inclusion is shaped by the interpretation and implementation of employment protections across Europe.Although equality and disability legislation establishes important rights, neurodivergent employees can have very different experiences of inclusion in practice. REWIRE will explore how organisational processes and decisions made by employers, HR professionals, line managers, occupational health practitioners, trade unions and legal actors influence whether formal protections translate into meaningful support at work.The research will span the UK, Germany, Sweden, Spain and Italy and will examine workplaces in finance, healthcare and public administration. By bringing together organisational and legal perspectives with the lived experiences of neurodivergent employees, the project aims to identify where inclusion can become weakened or inconsistent as policies move from legislation into workplace practice.Dr Gottardello is a core member of the Salvesen Mindroom Research Centre and founder and Director of the Neurodiversity, Organisations, Work and Intersectionality (NOWI) Lab at the University of Edinburgh Business School. Her research examines neurodiversity at work through multidisciplinary and intersectional perspectives.The project will generate new evidence to inform academic research, organisational practice and public policy, helping to strengthen workplace inclusion across different national and institutional contexts.Find out more about the REWIRE project This article was published on Tuesday 20 October 2026
