About this Event
Dr Alexandra F. Morris is a Lecturer (Education) in Ancient History at Queen’s University Belfast. She is an Egyptologist and disability historian whose research examines how disabled people in ancient Egypt, Ptolemaic Egypt and the wider Hellenistic world lived, how they were represented, and how they have been interpreted in scholarship and museums. Her work brings disability history and critical disability studies into conversation with Egyptology, Classics, and museum practice. She has cerebral palsy and dyspraxia, and her lived experience informs her research and advocacy.
She is the author of Disability in Ptolemaic Egypt and the Hellenistic World: Plato’s Stepchildren (Routledge, 2025) and co-editor of Disability in Ancient Egypt and Egyptology: All Our Yesterdays (Routledge, 2025) and Disability Activism in and out of the Academy: Classical Studies, Pedagogy and Practice (Routledge, 2026). She co-curated Images of Disability at the Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art (2026) and was named Working Classicists’ Unsung Classicist of the Year in 2024. She provides expert commentary for the media, including BBC News, The Guardian, and Fox News.
Alongside her research, she works to make museums and heritage spaces more accessible. She co-founded the UK Disability History and Heritage Hub and, with Dr Wade Berger, the Lived Experience with Disability in Museums research group. She is Co-Chair of CripAntiquity, Ex-Officio President of the Museum Education Roundtable, a member of the editorial board of Asterion Hub, and a leadership member of the Disabled Action Research Kollective (D.A.R.K.).
Audience
This panel event is suitable for ages 18+
Access
This event will have live subtitles.
The Object Based Learning Laboratory (OBLL) is accessible to wheelchair users and those with limited mobility from street level upon entering UCL Main Campus from Gower Street.
The OBLL is located on the ground floor of the
The entrance to the OBLL is located inside the .
Finding us
We are located in Bloomsbury, in the heart of central London. The nearest tube stations are Euston Square (Metropolitan, Circle, Hammersmith & City), Goodge Street (Northern Line), Warren Street (Victoria Line), and buses 18, 30, 73, 134 and 205 stop 3-5 minutes away on Euston Road.
About Research in Focus
The Research in Focus series platforms current research into UCL’s Museums and Collections through a programme of regularly researcher-led public talks.
UCL’s museums and collections encompass artefacts, specimens, artist works and more telling the history of living species in global contexts spanning thousands of years. The collections are used for teaching, public engagement and research, all of which contribute to our understanding of the world around us.
The Research in Focus talk series provides a platform for researchers to share their investigative enquiries through public engagement. We are proud to showcase how knowledge production is supported across varied collections.
The museums and collections are:
- Grant Museum of Zoology
- Petrie Museum of Egyptian and Sudanese Archaeology
- UCL Art Museum
- Science Collection in the Object Based Learning Lab
- Pathology Museum at the Royal Free Hospital
The collections allow for interdisciplinary approaches as well as singular focus, reflected in the talks in this series. Criticality and recognition of local knowledge sources are encouraged, especially when working with contested histories and knowledge production through epistemological violence.
Event venue & nearby stays
UCL Object-Based Learning Laboratory, Gower Street, London, United Kingdom
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