Visible Disabilities in Premodern Europe
Uncovering Stories of Disability Across Time
VISIT OUR EXHIBIT AT THE MCMANUS!
Opening 26 June 2026
Our Commitment to Disability Rights
The framing of disability as deficit, burden, and "natural" grounds for exclusion is not a neutral reflection of the past or the present. Deficit narratives about disabled lives are historically constructed.
We take seriously the principle that nothing about disabled people should be done without disabled people. Individuals with disabilities are involved at every level of this project - in leadership, in research, in the design of our public engagement, and in the communities we work with.
We believe disabled people when they describe their own experience. We believe that joy is part of that experience, alongside difficulty.
We believe that the failure to take disabled people's accounts of their own lives seriously is a form of injustice - epistemic injustice, in the language of philosophy - and that historical research has a role to play in challenging it.
This project is committed to accessibility in all its outputs - in the exhibition, on this website, and in the conversations we have with partners in the disability advocacy sector. We welcome feedback on how we can do better.
“To study [past individuals] is to inherit responsibilities to the living, to tell stories ethically, resist narratives that erase agency, and ensure that research benefits rather than exploits communities. Every excavation, interpretation, and publication carries consequences, shaping how societies remember, value, and protect their pasts. Activism in this sense…means recognizing that the questions we ask, the collaborations we pursue, and the ways we communicate our findings all have political and ethical dimensions. It asks us to consider who gains and who is left out, who speaks and who remains unheard. Bioarchaeology, when practiced with awareness of these dynamics, becomes a form of social engagement that connects evidence from the past to struggles for justice in the present.
Stephen B. Achabado, in Bioarchaeology, Activism and Social Justice (2026)