معرفی
Dr. Esme Cleall is a Senior Lecturer in the History of the British Empire at the University of Sheffield's School of History, Philosophy and Digital Humanities. She holds a B.A. and M.A. from the University of Sheffield and a Ph.D. from University College London (UCL). Her research focuses on the politics of colonial difference, particularly intersections of race, gender, disability, and religion in the British Empire. She has held an AHRC Leadership Fellowship and a British Academy Small Grant.
Her major works include Colonising Disability (2022) and Missionary Discourses of Difference (2012), analyzing disability in colonial contexts and missionary writings. Current projects explore mental distress in colonial archives and the history of deafness across the British World. She teaches courses on cultural imperialism and empire, and actively engages in decolonizing curricula.
Publications span journals like Historical Journal and History Workshop Journal, with key themes including: missionary justice in India, deaf communities in colonial contexts, and disability as a tool of imperial control. She supervises PhD students researching topics from missionary writing to disability and technology.
Cleall collaborates with community groups such as Sheffield Voices to produce accessible historical narratives, including films about learning disability history. She also contributed to the 'Indian Heritage in the Peak District' project, highlighting South Asian connections to the region.
