Hanson studied as an undergraduate at Middlebury College between 1960 and 1964, subsequently working with the Peace Corps in Kenya.
She studied for a PhD in Geography at Northwestern University between 1967 and 1973,[4] moving to Uppsala, Sweden with her husband and two young children in 1970 to conduct research for her dissertation.
[4] Professor Emeritus at the University of Washington, Victoria Lawson has argued that Hanson's career "is an empowering example of a collage of woven-together life experiences, substantive research interests, feminist values and progressive professional practices".
[4] Hanson was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1989,[8] was made a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1991,[9] and in 1999 received the Van Cleef Memorial Medal from the American Geographical Society, a medal conferred on scholars in the field of urban geography.
[4] At the 2008 Association of American Geographers conference, three panels were dedicated to honouring her contribution to the discipline, and five of the papers presented were subsequently published as a themed section of an issue of Gender, Place & Culture: A Journal of Feminist Geography.