Dr Moira Hansen (She/Her)

I am an Associate Lecturer in English Literature, having joined the Open University in September 2021. I currently teach on A240 (Literature Matters), A233 (Telling Stories) and A334 (From Shakespeare to Austen). Having studied for both my BA (Hons) English Language and Literature (2008) and my MA English (2015) with the OU, I'm proud to return to the OU as an AL and to play my part in supporting today's students achieve their study goals.

I have been teaching in Higher Education since 2016, having started as a Graduate Tutor in while pursuing my PhD in Scottish Literature at the University of Glasgow. During this time, I taught across all undergraduate levels in Scottish Literature, Honours level in English Literature, and across a variety of courses aimed at international study-abroad and summer-school students. Prior to this, I taught English in secondary schools in Aberdeen City and Aberdeenshire, having completed my PDGE in 2009.

I hold Honorary Associate status with the Department of English and Creative Writing at the OU, providing me with an insitutional home for my research and wider academic activities. I completed my PhD in 2020, submitting a thesis entitled '"Melancholy and low spirits are half my disease": physical and mental health in the life and works of Robert Burns' and, since then, have continued to pursue various research projects and activities relating to Robert Burns, late-eighteenth Scottish literature, and the intersections between literary and medical cultures in this time. My key focuses at the moment are Burns's relationship with Frances Dunlop, an upper-class patron who became and intimate friend and confidante of the poet through their shared experiences of poor mental health, and an exploration of the influence of Adam Smith's philosophies on the poet's world-view, particularly the role of The Theory of Moral Sentiment.

I am also co-editor of the Burns Chronicle (published by EUP; the first woman to hold the role in the 135-year history of the journal), co-editor of the forthcoming Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopaedia of Scottish Literature (expected 2027), and Executive Director of the Eighteenth-Century Scottish Studies Society (www.ecsss.org)