Dr Esme Cleall (she/her)
B.A., M.A. (Sheffield), Ph.D. (UCL)
School of History, Philosophy and Digital Humanities
Senior Lecturer in the History of the British Empire
+44 79252 754 653
Full contact details
School of History, Philosophy and Digital Humanities
231
9 Mappin Street
Sheffield
S1 4DT
- Profile
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I am a historian of Britain and the British Empire in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. I first came to Sheffield as an undergraduate and was then a Master’s student here. I then did a PhD at UCL, and taught at the University of Liverpool for two years, before returning to Sheffield as a lecturer in 2012. I particularly focus on histories of the body and have an expertise in disability history as well as the histories of racism and gender in British imperial contexts.
I have written two books. The first, 'Missionary Discourses of Difference', was on British, Protestant missionaries to India and southern Africa, and what they wrote about race and gender. I was particularly interested in how their writings about the body related to issues of health, fitness and disability. As a disabled researcher myself this was something I choose to pursue and my next book, 'Colonising Disability', was an exploration of what disability meant in the context of Britain as an imperial nation. I am now continuing my work on disability to both think about disabled enslavers in the Caribbean, and, quite differently, to think about the disability and environmentalist politics of breathing in early twentieth century Britain and southern Africa.
I teach on British History courses, histories of the British empire, and on methodology courses. I am committed to taking my historical work out of the classroom, and have worked on several public engagement and knowledge exchange projects including about Indian Heritage in the Peak District and around deaf and disability histoires and the archive. I am also a member of the Disabled Staff Network Committee.
Keywords: disability, Britain, British Empire, gender, race, bodies, breathing, enslavement.
- Qualifications
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B.A., M.A. (Sheffield), Ph.D. (UCL)
- Research interests
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I am currently working on two separate projects both to do with minds and bodies, disability history and the history of Britain and its empire.
One is on disability and enslavement. Thinking about what it meant to be both disabled and an enslaver and the complicated emotional and political methodological challenges excavating these histories brings.
A second is on the politics of breathing in late nineteenth-century and early twentieth century Britain and its empire. Here I’m examining a range of phenomena from open-air schools to sanatoria, from silicosis to problems of smog, to ‘fresh air’ ideologies, to fictionalised accounts of the virtues of deep breathing.
Though very different in time, place and subject matter, both of these projects develop strands of thought from my previous research. Particularly my second book, Colonising Disability (Cambridge, 2022), which demonstrated the importance of incorporating disability as a category of analysis into our understandings of the British empire.
I have a strong record of supervising PhD students and past and present students have covered a range of topics from disability in missionary writing, to blind writing and literacy, to the history of the circus, to cotton spinning, to servants at Chatsworth House.
I am interested in working with community groups with my research and have worked with a Hindu Community group in Sheffield and with the Deaf Community to explore different strands of my research work together. I am also involved in a project about improving archival access for disabled scholars.
- Publications
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Books
- Colonising Disability: Impairment and Otherness Across Britain and Its Empire, c. 1800–1914. Cambridge University Press.
- Missionary Discourses of Difference: Negotiating Otherness in the British Empire, 1840-1900. Palgrave Macmillan.
Journal articles
- In search of Ned: A Zulu man in Mid-Victorian Britain. Journal of British Studies, 64. View this article in WRRO
- Reconsidering the history of eugenics and discrimination in migration control. Migration Studies, 13(1). View this article in WRRO
- Disability and postcolonialism. Postcolonial Studies, 27(1), 1-16. View this article in WRRO
- Imperial optics and colonial disability: missions to blind and deaf children in ‘the East’, c. 1880-1939. Postcolonial Studies, 27(1), 17-35. View this article in WRRO
- Decolonising deaf history: Harlan Lane, Postcolonialism, and Critical Colonial History. Zeithistorische Forschungen / Studies in Contemporary History, 19 (2022)(2), 380-387. View this article in WRRO
- Disability as a problem of humanity in Scottish enlightenment thought. Historical Journal, 65(2), 328-348. View this article in WRRO
- From Divine Judgement to Colonial Courts: Missionary ‘Justice’ in British India, c. 1840–1914. Cultural and Social History, 1-15.
- Deaf Connections and Global Conversations: Deafness and education in and beyond the British Empire, ca. 1800-1900. Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History, 16(1). View this article in WRRO
- Orientalising deafness: race and disability in imperial Britain. Social Identities, 21(1), 22-36. View this article in WRRO
- ‘Deaf to the Word’: Gender, Deafness and Protestantism in Nineteenth‐Century Britain and Ireland. Gender & History, 25(3), 590-603.
- Far-Flung Families and Transient Domesticity: Missionary Households in Metropole and Colony. Victorian Review, 39(2), 163-179.
- Imperial Relations: Histories of family in the British Empire. Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History, 14(1).
- Jane Groom and the Deaf Colonists: Empire, Emigration and the Agency of Disabled People in the late Nineteenth-Century British Empire. History Workshop Journal, 81(1), 39-61. View this article in WRRO
- ‘In defiance of the highest principles of justice, principles of righteousness’: the indenturing of the Bechuana rebels and the ideals of empire, 1897-1900.. Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 40(4), 601-618.
Book chapters
- IMPERIAL LIVES: CONFRONTING THE LEGACIES OF EMPIRE, DISABILITY AND THE VICTORIANS, Disability and the Victorians Attitudes Interventions Legacies (pp. 38-54).
- Deafness : representation, sign language, and community, ca. 1800–1920 In Huff JL & Stoddard Holmes M (Ed.), A Cultural History of Disability in the Long Nineteenth Century (pp. 95-112). London: Bloomsbury. View this article in WRRO
- Deafness (pp. 95-112). Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
- From researching heritage to action heritage (pp. 171-186). Bristol University Press
- Sexuality : 1800-1920 In McKenzie K (Ed.), A Cultural History of Western Empires in the Age of Empire (pp. 131-150). London: Bloomsbury. View this article in WRRO
- Producing and managing deviance in the disabled colonial self: John Kitto, the deaf traveller In Jackson W & Manktelow E (Ed.), Subverting empire : deviance and disorder in the British colonial world Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan. View this article in WRRO
- ‘Deaf to the Word’: Gender, Deafness and Protestantism in Nineteenth‐Century Britain and Ireland (pp. 195-208). Wiley
- Creating Religious Childhoods in Anglo-World and British Colonial Contexts, 1800-1950 In Morrison H & Martin MC (Ed.) Routledge
- Race and empire (pp. 1-6). Wiley
- Producing and Managing Deviance in the Disabled Colonial Self, Subverting Empire Palgrave Macmillan
- Colonising Disability: Impairment and Otherness Across Britain and Its Empire, c. 1800–1914. Cambridge University Press.
- Research group
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Research supervision
I welcome students interested in working on the history of the British Empire; the histories of race, gender, and disability; missionary history; and the histories of nineteenth-century India, southern Africa and Britain.
- Current Students
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- Rachel Garratt (second supervisor, with University of Leeds) - Enabling or Disabling: deaf responses to auditory technology in the early twentieth century.
- Completed Students
- Katherine Everitt - The Role of Trust, Social Capital and Reputation in the Networks and Connections of British Industrialising Cotton-Spinning Mills, c. 1780-1840.
- Conner Scott (second supervisor) - Propaganda for things as they are'? British newsreels in everyday life between c.1920-c.1939
- Sabine Hanke - National identity and cultural difference in the British and German circus, 1920-1945.
- David Holland (second supervisor) - Natives and Newcomers, Marriage and Belonging - South Asian migration, settlement and working-class tolerance in the Sheffield area during the early twentieth century.
- Fiona Clapperton (second supervisor, School of English) - From Servants to Staff : the making of a modern estate, Chatsworth 1908-1950.
- Julia McColl (second supervisor, University of Liverpool) - Imagining the Missionary Hero: juvenile missionary biographies, c. 1870-1917.
- Teaching interests
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I am passionate about teaching British History, the History of the British Empire, historiographical and methodological courses, and about integrating the History of Disability into my teaching practice.
- Teaching activities
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- Visions and Violence: race, empire and identity in mid-nineteenth century Britain
- Researching History
- History Workshop
- Professional activities and memberships
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- Fellow of the Royal Historical Society
- Committee member of the Social History Society
- Public engagement
I am committed to working with community groups to unravel new perspectives on the past.
I have recently been working with Sheffield Voices, a self-advocacy group for adults with learning disabilities, to make a film about the history of learning disabilities in Sheffield. You can watch the film we made here.
I have been an Early Career Researcher on the University of Sheffield’s AHRC-funded Researching Community Heritage Team. As part of this project, I worked as a consultant historian on a project on 'Indian Heritage in the Peak District' led by Hindu Samaj and funded by the All Our Stories National Lottery Fund to unravel the connections between India and the Peak District National Park. The ‘Indian Heritage in the Peak District’ project garnered some media interest and coverage. In particular by Martin Wainwright (Northern Editor) of the Guardian.
In the media:
I have written for The Conversation.