Hannah began her PhD in 2022 after accepting a fully funded studentship from the School of Social Sciences and Humanities.
Hannah’s thesis is an interdisciplinary project examining abortion and maternal histories in nineteenth-century literature and culture. In 2021, Hannah completed her MA in Victorian Studies at the University of Leicester. Her MA thesis '"She Longed to Carry All Suffering Women in Her Arms": The Female Doctor's Hands in Margaret Todd's Mona Maclean, Medical Student (1892)' won the Waddington MA Prize in English.
Hannah studied BA English at Loughborough University and graduated in 2020. Before starting her PhD, Hannah worked as a Library Assistant at the British Library.
Abortion in Nineteenth-Century British Literature
PGR Supervisors: Dr Claire O'Callaghan, Dr Anne-Marie Beller
Hannah’s thesis is a literary and cultural exploration of abortion in nineteenth-century Britain. It analyses the termination of pregnancy in a selection of nineteenth-century fiction and life-writing including works by Elizabeth Gaskell, Wilkie Collins, George Eliot, and others. Hannah’s wider research interests include motherhood and maternity; the body; psychiatry; trauma; neo-Victorianism; and the author Barbara Comyns.
Hannah is a member of the Cultural Currents, 1870-1930 and Health Humanities research groups and she manages all social media platforms for the Health Humanities.
- 'Archives, Objects, Methods 2023: A Conference Review', The Polyphony, 11 August 2023, https://thepolyphony.org/2023/08/11/archives-objects-methods-2023-a-conference-review/
- 'Interview with a Guest', The International Centre for Victorian Women Writers Newsletter, 20 (2023), 8-10.
Conference papers
- 'Medical Tools and the Working Body: The Woman Doctor in Fin-de-Siècle Fiction', Victorian Discoveries Conference (University of Leicester, 1 July 2022).
- 'Terminating Terminologies: Language of Abortion in the Nineteenth Century', Broadly Conceived Conference (Birkbeck University, London, 8 July 2023).
- 'Shapeless Specimens: The Hidden History of Abortion in Wilkie Collins's Armadale', Victorian Popular Fiction Association Conference (Bishop Grosseteste University, 12-14 July 2023).
- '"Mr Glover asked me to write this to you": Elizabeth Gaskell's Letters and an Accidental Abortion', Quills and Characters: Approaches to Women's Letters, 1660-1860 Online Conference (Chawton House, 1-2 September 2023).
- 'Language of Abortion in the Nineteenth Century', Health Humanities Research Panel (Loughborough University, 21 November 2023).
- Upcoming: Talk with the London and South East branch of the Gaskell Society (September 2024).