Dr Claire Hansen

Dr Claire Hansen is a Senior Lecturer in English and Associate Dean (Student Experience & Integrity) at the Australian National University.

Claire specialises in Shakespeare studies. She is a member of the Shakespeare Reloaded project, an ongoing collaborative project exploring innovative approaches to teaching and learning at secondary and tertiary institutions. She assists in the management of the Shakespeare Reloaded website and writes regularly for the Shakespeare Reloaded blog.

Her second book, Shakespeare and Place-Based Learning, was recently published by Cambridge University Press. 

Her first book, Shakespeare and Complexity Theory, was published by Routledge in 2017. Claire has also published on Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe, education, early modern dance, and female characters in renaissance literature. 

Claire's current projects include place-based approaches to Shakespeare, Shakespearean blue humanities, and the health humanities (see below for more). 

She is also passionate about theatre, and has published a host of theatre reviews on The Conversation and on the Shakespeare Reloaded blog.

Claire has won multiple teaching awards. This includes a national Australian Awards for University Teaching (AAUT) Citation for Outstanding Contributions to Student Learning (2021). In 2024, She won the Vice-Chancellor's Award for Teaching Excellence. In 2023, she won the CASS Award for Excellence in Student Experience. In 2022, she was awarded the 2022 CASS Certificate of Recognition for Education Excellence. In 2020, Claire was the recipient of a university Citation for Outstanding Contributions to Student Learning, and was also the overall winner of this award.

Claire completed her PhD at the University of Sydney, where her research focused on the use of complexity theory in Shakespeare studies and in education.

Areas of Research

• Shakespeare studies - early modern literature and drama, women in early modern drama, Shakespeare and ecocriticism, Shakespeare and pedagogy, Shakespeare and place
• Ecocriticism, environmental humanities, blue humanities, and place-based learning
• Complexity theory
• The health humanities and medical humanities 
• Pedagogy - approaches to teaching and learning Shakespeare, Shakespeare studies in secondary and tertiary environments, complexity theory in education, place-based learning. ecocritical approaches to teaching

Research projects

Shakespeare and Place

Claire’s current research is centred on Shakespeare and place. Her new book, Shakespeare and Place-Based Learning, was published by Cambridge University Press.

In 2021, she presented her work on place-based Shakespeare pedagogy at Shakespeare’s Globe Climate Emergency Symposium.

Blue Humanities

Claire has several publications on the blue humanities in early modern studies. She is co-editor of Critical Approaches to the Australian Blue Humanities, and was co-founder and co-chair of the Blue Humanities Lab.

Health humanities

Claire is a co-founder of the health humanities project, The Heart of the Matter. The group launched a podcast in 2021. She is also co-chair of the ANU Health Humanities Network.

Claire’s co-authored article on Shakespeare, artificial hearts and the pulse won the Shakespeare Association of America Conference Innovative Article Award in 2022.

More recently, she co-published an article on broken hearts in Shakespeare. It is available (open access) here.

Supervisions

Claire welcomes supervision requests for projects looking at Shakespeare or early modern studies, ecocriticism, environmental and blue humanities, and health humanities.

Current and completed student projects include:

• Practice-led research in creative writing: exploring the power of nature to alleviate feelings of homesickness through life writing (2025, PhD)
• Representation of hearts in George Eliot's Middlemarch (ANU Medical School research project, 2023)
• Using Shakespeare to teach empathy to second year medical students (ANU Medical School research project, 2023)
• Poised to change: dynamic processes and Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon and The.PowerBook by Jeanette Winterson (2023, PhD)
• Sleep and Extended Cognition in Spenserian Epic and Shakespearean Drama (2021, PhD)
• The power of the question: How hip-hop pedagogy can reveal a discourse of questioning in Shakespeare education and Hamlet (2020, Honours)

Grants

2023 - S Ernest Sprott Grant, The University of Melbourne ($50,000)

PhD FHEA