Hannan grew up in Texas, where the descendants of the original Central European settlers, until recently, preserved their local dialects/languages, commonly referred to as Bohemian (Czech), Moravian, and Silesian.

This early experience of multiethnicity and multilingualism, along with family links to Czech Silesia, inspired him to embark on the doctoral research to comprehend the shaping and maintenance of ethnolinguistic and religious difference in the borderland region (that borders on Poland and Slovakia) in the broader context of Central Europe.

An epitome of such a situation he saw in his native United States, which, according to him, explained a constant increase in genealogical research in the country, observed since the 1970s.

He was especially critical of the relentless Polonization of Belarusians, Rusyns (Lemkos), and Ukrainians, who, in his eyes, preserved 'real Slavic spirituality,' as encapsulated in Greek Catholicism, Orthodox Christianity, and the liturgical language of Church Slavonic.

[1] Hannan chose Poland as his adopted homeland in preference to the Czech Republic, which he perceived as an example of an overexclusive ethnic nationalism, which led to the 1993 breakup of Czechoslovakia, producing this nation-state and another, Slovakia.