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.
Publications
- ‘Verification of a Date in the Gaskell Letters: Mrs Glover’s Original Patient Case Notes’, Notes and Queries, online publication 20 January 2026, doi:10.1093/notesj/gjaf149
- Review of Review of Confinement: The Hidden History of Maternal Bodies in Nineteenth-Century Britain, by Jessica Cox and Pregnancy in the Victorian Novel, by Livia Arndal Woods, BAVS Newsletters, 25.3 (2025), pp. 8–9
- '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), pp. 8–10
Conference papers
- Upcoming, ‘The Abortionist’s “Galvanic Apparatus”: Obstetric Surgery, Electricity, and Wilkie Collins’s Armadale (1864–66)’, Sensation Fiction and Health Humanities VPFA Study Day, 27 March 2026 (Loughborough University)
- Upcoming, ‘Maternity following uterine surgery in the mid-Victorian period: Tracing patient case notes and genealogical records’, The Politics of Motherhood: Maternalism, Maternity and Mothering Conference, 5–6 February 2026 (UKRI, University of Worcester)
- ‘“The awful black coat made of unborn lambs”: Abortion and animal violence in Barbara Comyns’s The Skin Chairs (1962)’, Women Writing Violence Workshop, 3–4 April 2025 (LMU Munich and University of Reading)
- ‘Language of Abortion in the Nineteenth Century’, Health Humanities Research Panel, 21 November 2023 (Loughborough University)
- ‘“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 Conference, 1–2 September 2023 (Chawton House)
- ‘Shapeless Specimens: The Hidden History of Abortion in Wilkie Collins’s Armadale’, Victorian Popular Fiction Association Conference, 12–14 July 2023 (Bishop Grosseteste University)
- ‘Terminating Terminologies: Language of Abortion in the Nineteenth Century’, Broadly Conceived Conference, 8 July 2023 (Birkbeck, University of London)
- ‘Medical Tools and the Working Body: The Woman Doctor in Fin-de-Siècle Fiction’, Victorian Discoveries Conference, 1 July 2022 (University of Leicester)
Invited talks
- Upcoming, ‘Gaskell and the Distribution of Women’s Health: Letters and Patient Case Notes’, The Centre for Victorian Studies Spring Seminar Series, 20 May 2026 (University of Leicester)
- ‘Elizabeth Gaskell, Letters, and an Accidental Abortion at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital’, 14 September 2024 (The Gaskell Society)