Ryan Hanning is an itinerant professor of Church history and Catholic studies. He travels throughout the United States, Canada, and Europe, teaching and speaking at both church and academic conferences. In addition to teaching, Ryan has served in diocesan catechetical and university administration. He helped to form the partnership between the University of Mary in Bismarck, North Dakota, and Arizona State University (ASU) and to create graduate-level education programs for Catholic School teachers. He taught comparative religion and the New Testament for over ten years. For the past ten years, he has focused primarily on Church history, the development of theology in both the Eastern and Western Christian traditions, and the history and identity of Catholic schools in the United States. 

He completed his undergraduate degree in religious studies at ASU, his graduate degree in education at Northern Arizona University, studied post-graduate theology at the University of Dallas, and completed his PhD in Theology at Maryvale Institute, from Liverpool Hope University, UK. His studies have included time in both Oxford and Cambridge, as well as a short time at the Jagiellonian in Krakow, Poland. 

He and his wife homestead in Whites Creek, Tennessee with their nine children.