Esme Cleall is a historian of the British empire at the University of Sheffield. Her work focuses on histories of disability, difference and the body both in Britain itself and in the overseas British empire. She has written two books, Missionary Discourses of Difference: negotiating otherness in the British empire (Palgrave, 2012) and Colonising Disability: impairment and otherness across Britain and its empire (CUP, 2022) and many articles on the social and cultural history of British imperialism. She is currently working on projects about migration and eugenics; on whiteness and disability in the colonial Caribbean; and on the lived experience of disability in a range of colonial contexts. She teaches at undergraduate and postgraduate levels and is involved in decolonising the curriculum. She is interested in participatory research and working with community groups to explore history together. She is also committed to exploring issues of equality, diversity and inclusion in academia and, in particular, in organising around issues of disability in higher education.