Personal statement

Dr Charlotte Webber is Principal's Fellow in Autism & Neurodiversity in the Strathclyde Institute of Education at the University of Strathclyde. She is an experienced researcher whose previous work has involved collaborating closely with national literacy and education organisations, young people and academic colleagues to conduct impactful research related to wellbeing, literacy and neurodiversity. She is also involved in work supporting autistic and neurodivergent students and staff in higher education, drawing on her own lived experience as an autistic academic. She currently teaches on the MSc Austism and MEd Autism, as well as guest lecturing for the PG Certificate in Inclusive Education. 

In her postdoctoral work at the University of Edinburgh, she worked on the NEST (NEurodivergent peer Support Toolkit) project, co-designing a suite of materials to facilitate peer support for neurodivergent young people in mainstream secondary schools. The co-designed materials have been trialed and evaluated in four Scottish high schools, and have since been downloaded in over 50 countries. 

She previously worked on a number of projects within University of Edinburgh Literacy Lab, where she completed her PhD. These included the Neurodiversity and Fiction Reading project and the Reading and Wellbeing project. Her PhD, The Young People's Reading Project, was a collaboration with Scottish Book Trust and adopted participatory approaches for exploring young people's experiences with volitional reading. 

She also co-convenes the UKLA Special Interest Group on Participatory Approaches to Literacy Research.