Lylaah has a commitment to making Classics as a Faculty and a discipline more inclusive, and to creating spaces in which all students feel they have a voice. She has worked tirelessly in often difficult conversations with me and my colleagues, and in liaising with student reps to encourage and guide other students’ engagement with critical issues of diversity, decolonisation and White privilege.

Chief among Lylaah’s contributions is her organisation and hosting of a panel on “decolonising the museum”, the first in a series of events aiming to make the Faculty community more conscious and owning of Classics’ heritage and of its present failings. The speaker list was as inspired as it was inspiring, but so too was Lylaah’s chairing. It attracted over 80 participants despite being held in exam term and advertised only internally. The event has unified and galvanised the student body, improved its dialogue with Museum staff, and shown the way to making this a prominent and, in the future, more public-facing, access-oriented series.

The discussion continues with undergraduates and postgraduates working together on a whiteness of plaster trail in the Museum. For Lylaah, research and activism are interlinked. Commitment of this kind can be painful. I hope it is some consolation to know that she has enhanced students’ experience and engagement and encouraged the Faculty to pursue new initiatives in, and beyond, the curriculum.

In 2020-21, Lylaah was undertaking an MPhil in the Faculty of Classics at Lucy Cavendish College.