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Dr Hannah Saunders

Hannah

Research Fellow

Email: h.saunders@qmul.ac.uk

Profile

Dr Hannah Saunders is a Visiting Research Fellow at Queen Mary University of London and Head of Policy for an alliance of not-for-profits working to support people with appearance-affecting conditions. 
Hannah's work explores the overlap between appearance and disability. The arguments in her work have recently been endorsed by the Upper Tax Tribunal in the case of Mark Glenn Ltd v HMRC [2026] UKUT 00034 (TCC) which held that, in the tax context of that case, severe baldness in women is a disability. This is a landmark victory. 

Hannah's work often uses an interdisciplinary, socio-legal approach to critique law and policy in this area. She has led multiple externally-funded projects aiming to improve workplace equality for people with disfigurements. She is currently working in partnership with a UK university to explore the harms caused by failures of facial recognition technology on people with visibly different faces. And she is leading a partnership with a major high street retailer to understand the experience of shopping when you have a visible difference. She has lead-authored key speeches delivered at the highest levels of international policy and in 2024, her policy position paper was signed by leading figures within the international disability rights movement.

She has a PhD from Durham University, entitled "Does the law provide effective equality for people with a visible difference in the workplace?". She also edited two major textbooks in the field of disability and employment law for a number of years. Hannah leads the Appearance and the Law Discussion Group – an academic forum where members meet to discuss the connections between appearance, identity, law and policy. If you are interested in joining the group, please do get in touch.

Research

Hannah's research focuses on disfigurement, disability and appearance equality law, including the impact of:

  • the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities
  • the disability (and severe disfigurement) provisions in the Equality Act 2010
  • international approaches to appearance in law

Publications

Publications

  • Book, 'Appearance, disability and the law' Cambridge University Press 2025.
  • Book chapter: " You would never thinik of a visible difference as being a disabiltiy": Visible difference and the law in D. Harcourt and others, The Oxford Handbook on the Psychology of Appearance' (in press, 2026).
  • Hannah Saunders, 'Appearance, harassment and the Equality Act 2010', UK Labour Law blog, 15 September 2022.
  • (2022) Hannah Saunders, April 2022, ‘Oscars drama packs a punch’ vol 172 7974, NLJ 9.
  • (2020) Difficult distinctions in anti-discrimination law: disfigurement, disability and appearance, IJDL
  • (2018) The invisible law on visible difference: disfigurement in the workplace, ILJ
  • (2012) ‘Struggling to cope with dyslexia’, The Financial Times.
  • (2007) Reasonable adjustments for disabled employees, On the case journal.

Conference papers and oral presentations

  • Future of Identity Conference,  'Battling bias: the quest for fair digital identity' London 2025. 
  • Hannah Saunders, ‘Should appearance be a protected characteristic under the Equality Act 2010?’, presentation to the Labour Law Discussion Group at UCL, October 2023.
  • (2023) 'A model of good practice for appearance-inclusive workplaces', Universities HR group.
  • (2023) 'Building Inclusivity', Association for Consultancy and Engineering.
  • (2023) Disfigurement: reaching this underrepresented group', United Nations Conference of State Parties under the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabiities, side panel hosted by Face Equality International in conjunction with the ILO.
  • (2022) ‘Lightning talk: Facial difference and artificial intelligence’ at Rights Con 2022 online, delivered jointly with Phyllida Swift, CEO of Face Equality International.
  • Hannah Saunders and Nadia Craddock, 'Appearance Equality and the Law' podcast, Appearance Matters on Soundcloud, 2021.
  • (2022) 'Language, Law and lookism' and the Appearance, Identity and the Law Conference, Queen Mary University of London.
  • (2021), 'Reflections on visible difference workplace equality: One step forwards, two steps back?', Appearance Matters conference. UWE, Bristol.
  • (2020), Presentation to Centre for Appearance Research at UWE, Bristol.
  • (2019), ‘Disfigurement: A visibly different approach to equality?’, Society of Legal Scholars conference. Preston, Lancashire.
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