Rory Hanna

Born in Sheffield, I studied History and German at Oxford University, graduating with a First Class Honours BA.

My dissertation explored the treatment of Darwin’s theory of evolution – and its alleged implications for women’s emancipation – in the fictional writings of Lou Andreas-Salomé and Helene Böhlau, two German-speaking female authors of the Wilhelmine Era. Other components of my degree included an extended essay on the role of class within British punk culture of the 1970s, as well as modules on Franz Kafka, Bertolt Brecht, and political thought in the nineteenth and early twentieth century.

I received Scholar status in 2016 for excellent academic performance, and gained the Ockenden Prize in 2014 for the best first-year German exam results at Wadham College.

I spent the academic year 2015/16 on an ERASMUS-funded study exchange at the Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg, where I studied, among other topics, the ‘1968’ student protests in West Germany and narrative experimentation in German fiction between 1883 and 1918.