After graduating from Kent School in 1975, Harvard University in 1979 and receiving her doctorate from the University of Pennsylvania in 1987, she joined Yale University in 1988 as assistant professor and became a professor in 1998. Hansen spent one year in Shanghai on a Fulbright grant from 2005–06; 2008–09 and 2011–12, teaching at Yale's joint undergraduate program with Peking University; and fall semester 2015 teaching at Yale-NUS college in Singapore.^[2]

Valerie Hansen became the Stanley Woodward Professor of History in 2017.^[3] At Yale, she teaches History of Traditional China, The History of World History, and seminars on Silk Road history.^[4]

Hansen's first book was Changing Gods in Medieval China, 1127-1279, which was published in 1990.^{[5][6][7][8][9]} Her second book, Negotiating Daily Life in Traditional China, 600-1400, appeared in 1995.^{[10][11][12][13][14][15][16]}

In 2000, she published, The Open Empire. A second edition of the book was published in 2015. The book argues, contrary to the widespread view that no outsiders ever influenced traditional China, that Indian Buddhists and northern nomadic peoples shaped traditional China throughout its long history.^[17][18]

In 2012, Hansen published The Silk Road: A New History, which argued that the Silk Road trade was small-scale and usually involved local goods.^[19] The book received positive reviews from critics.^{[20][21][22][23][24][25][26]}

In April 2020, The Year 1000: When Explorers Connected the World—and Globalization Began was published to mostly favorable reviews.^{[27][28][29][30]} In a review in Early Medieval Europe Søren Michael Sindbæk wrote that she"expends five pages pursuing a paper-thin case for Maya reliefs showing Norse captives. Hansen is a conscientious scholar, and admits to alternative interpretations; yet she opts to promote the one story that fits the book’s vision of globalization, knowing that it is a fringe theory. The fleeting moment of Norse explorations in North America is thus emphasized out of all proportion.^[31]

• Changing Gods in Medieval China, 1127-1279 (1990) ISBN 978-0691608631
• Negotiating Daily Life in Traditional China (1995) ISBN 978-0300060638
• The Silk Road: A New History (2012) ISBN 978-0190218423
• The Open Empire: A History of China to 1600 (2000) ISBN 978-1111352332
• Voyages in World History (co-authored with Kenneth R. Curtis)
  • First Edition (2005)
  • Second Edition (2008)
  • Third Edition (2015)
• The Year 1000: When Explorers Connected the World—and Globalization Began (2020) ISBN 978-1-5011-9410-8

• 2013 - Gustav Ranis International Book Prize, co-winner, for the best book on an international subject by a member of the Yale University faculty^[32]
• 2013 - International Convention of Asia Scholars Book Prize Reading Committee Accolade for the best teaching tool in the Humanities^[33]
• 2021 - Elected into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences^[34]