[1] She is an Honorary Professor in the Department of English Language and Literature at the University College London.
She researches, writes, teaches, lectures and broadcasts on art produced in Britain between about 1500 and about 1710, and in particular on the numerous Netherlandish-British artistic and cross-cultural links of that period.
One long-standing focus is the life and work of the 17th-century portrait-painter Cornelius Johnson, (Cornelis Jonson van Ceulen).
[citation needed] Hearn also writes on the British career of Anthony van Dyck.
[citation needed] For many years she has taught at university level on the centrality of migrant artists to 16th- and 17th-century (Tudor and Stuart period) British art.