Leonie Hannan is a social and cultural historian of Britain, Ireland and the north Atlantic world, who considers themes of gender, material culture, enquiry and domestic space. Her new programme of research investigates the social life of air. She is also working on collaborative projects that consider diverse modes of everyday knowledge-making, including commonplacing and experimentation with food and cooking.

Her second monograph for Manchester University Press: A Culture of Curiosity: Scientific Enquiry in the Eighteenth-Century Home was published in 2023 and is available open access. With Olwen Purdue, Leonie has also published an edited volume for Routledge on Dealing with Difficult Pasts: the Public History of Ireland. Leonie's first monograph, Women of Letters: Gender, Writing and the Life of the Mind in Early Modern England was published in 2016.

Leonie's collaborations have led to a number of books: History through Material Culture (with Sarah Longair); Gender and Material Culture in Britain since 1500 (with Hannah Greig and Jane Hamlett); The Changing Arts of Communication in the Eighteenth Century (with Penelope Corfield); and Engaging the Senses: Object-Based Learning in Higher Education (with Helen J. Chatterjee). Leonie also publishes on pedagogy, specifically relating to the role of heritage objects and spaces in adult learning. 

Over the last twenty years, Leonie has worked extensively in museums and heritage and built collaborative working relationships between researchers, teachers, curators, museum collections and heritage sites. She is currently on the Advisory Board for the Mellon Centre for Migration Studies.

Leonie Hannan is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, Deputy Director of the Centre for Public History at Queen's University. She is Co-Lead of the Science and Culture Research Group at Queen's University. Leonie is also part of the 100 Hours research group which experiments with methodologies for material culture research.

Leonie is very happy to be approached as a PhD supervisor on topics relating to the areas of enquiry outlined above.

social and cultural history, gender and material culture

histories of home

histories of intellectual life

heritage collections and adult learning