Dr Esme Cleall

Lecturer in the History of the British Empire

History of the British Empire; colonialism; postcolonialism; India; southern Africa; race and ethnicity; gender; disability history; deafness; missionaries; feminism. 

Office Hours: Autumn 2013-14 - Tuesdays 12-1pm; 2-3pm

e.r.cleall@sheffield.ac.uk
 

+44 (0)114 22 22619
 

Jessop West 3.07

Major Publications

Biography

Esme Cleall joined the department in September 2012, having previously studied history at the University as both an undergraduate and an MA student. Her PhD was undertaken at UCL and completed in November 2009. Since then she has worked at UCL as a teaching fellow and at the University of Liverpool as a lecturer in Modern History before returning to Sheffield.

She works on the social and cultural history of the British Empire; the politics of difference; and race and disability in nineteenth-century Britain.

Research

My research is on the politics of colonial difference and exclusion in the British Empire. I am particularly interested in the production of categories of otherness including those based around race, gender, religion and disability.

My monograph, Missionary Discourses of Difference: negotiating otherness in the British Empire, c. 1840-1900, explores the difference of gender and race through the writings of British missionaries stationed in nineteenth-century India and southern Africa. In particular, I focus on the family and domesticity; sickness and medicine; and colonial violence; as key areas where anxieties around difference were particularly acute.

My new project extends my analysis by looking at disability and in particular deafness in nineteenth and twentieth century Britain and its empire. The project focuses on the relationship between disability and race as categories of difference and on how this was played out in colonial contexts.

Public Engagement and Wider Impact

I am a consultant historian on a project on 'Indian Heritage in the Peak District' lead by Hindu Samaj and funded by the All Our Stories National Lottery Fund.

As part of the University of Sheffield's Community Heritage programme funded by the AHRC, I am an appointed Early Careers Researcher, working with community groups across the country.

With Emily Manktelow (York) and Laura Ishiguro (British Columbia) I co-founded the Colonial Families Research Project which aims at bringing together researchers interested in the history of the family in colonial contexts; and facilitating dialogue among those working in academic and public contexts, archives, libraries and anywhere else that colonial family history is found around the world. Our blog can be accessed at www.colonialfamilies.wordpress.com.

Previous projects with which I have been involved include 'On the Move', a project funded by UCL and the Raphael Samuel Centre which brought together youth groups, schools, historians, museums and artists to explore questions about identity and migration in London.

Research Supervision and Teaching

Esme welcomes students interested in working on the history of the British Empire; the histories of race, gender, and disability; colonialism and postcolonialism; missionary history; and the histories of nineteenth-century India, southern Africa and Britain.

Current PhD Students

I am currently a second supervisor for:

• Sacha Hepburn, '"Invisible Labourers": histories of domestic workers in Zambia'
• Julie McColl (at University of Liverpool) 'The construction and reception of the missionary hero and the response of juvenile audiences in late Victorian Britain'

Selected Publications

Monograph

- Missionary Discourses of Difference: Negotiating Otherness in the British Empire, c. 1840-1900, Palgrave Macmillan, 2012.

Articles

- 'In defiance of the highest principles of justice: the indenturing of the Bechuana rebels and the ideals of empire, 1897-1900', Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 40:4, 2012, 601-619.

- With Feminist Fightback Collective, 'The Cuts are a Feminist Issue', Soundings, 49, Autumn 2011.

- With History of Feminism Collective, 'Introduction', Women: a Cultural Review on 'Rethinking the History of Feminism', 21:3, Autumn 2010, 247-250.

- 'Missionary Masculinities and War: the LMS in Southern Africa, c. 1860-1899', South African Historical Journal, 61:2, June 2009, 232-252.

- '"Reconfiguring the British" Seminars and Commemoration of the Bicentenary of the Abolition of the Slave Trade', Report Back, History Workshop Journal, 64, Autumn 2007, 456-459.

Special Issues

- Guest Editor (with History of Feminism Collective) of a special issue of Women: a Cultural Review on 'Rethinking the History of Feminism', 21:3, Autumn 2010.