I am Hannah Walton, a cultural heritage researcher and writer interested in folklore, memory, class, supernatural belief and the stories people inherit.

My route into this work has not been straightforward. I grew up in a small working-class family in the Midlands and left school at fourteen after a difficult period in my life. I later returned to education through self-study, community work and a long, winding route through higher education. That experience shaped the questions I still return to: who gets to be seen as knowledgeable, whose stories are taken seriously, and what happens to the forms of memory that sit outside formal institutions.

I have always been drawn to the weird, the wonderful and the half-remembered: ghost stories, family histories, local legends, charms, omens, old objects, strange places and the things people keep saying because they matter. For me, folklore is not separate from ordinary life. It is one of the ways people make sense of belonging, danger, care, loss and inheritance.

Alongside my academic work, I have spent several years working in social impact, youth participation and community-focused roles. This has strengthened my interest in lived experience, informal knowledge and the ways institutions recognise, translate or overlook what people know.

My work has grown in branches, not straight lines. Across folklore, cultural heritage, social history, education, science and public writing, I am interested in the same underlying question: whose knowledge counts?

I have been awarded the Paul Mellon Centre MA/MPhil Studentship and the John McGivering Writing Prize 2026. My work has also been recognised through awards for social impact, volunteering and community leadership, including the University of Manchester President’s Medal for Social Responsibility, Big Issue Top 100 Changemakers and a Points of Light Award.