  We discuss the extraction of the electromagnetic and spin polarisabilities of
nucleons from lattice QCD. We show that the external field method can be used
to measure all the electromagnetic and spin polarisabilities including those of
charged particles. We then turn to the extrapolations required to connect such
calculations to experiment in the context of finite volume chiral perturbation
theory. We derive results relevant for lattice simulations of QCD,
partially-quenched QCD and quenched QCD. Our results for the polarisabilities
show a strong dependence on the lattice volume and quark masses, typically
differing from the infinite volume limit by ~10% for current lattice volumes
and quark masses.
