Trinity College Dublin, The University of Dublin

Dr Erin-Marie Legacey

Assistant Professor in Nineteenth-Century European History

Dr. Erin-Marie Legacey is a historian of Modern France, with an emphasis on the social and cultural history of Paris since the French Revolution. She is currently working on a project about early female aeronautic daredevils who worked as professional entertainers across Europe in the nineteenth century. The lives and legends of these balloonists, parachutists, and other high-flying women complicate existing narratives about gender, bravery, and performance in the post-revolutionary era. Erin is also very interested in exploring “the air” as a unique space of possibility for women during this time. Her first book explored the surprisingly lively history of Paris’s modern burial culture, tracing the postrevolutionary origins and significance of iconic Parisian spaces like the Paris Catacombs and Père Lachaise Cemetery.

Selected Publications

Monograph

Making Space for the Dead: Cemeteries, Catacombs, and the Reimagining of Paris, 1780-1830. Cornell University Press, 2019.

Edited volume

(Co-edited with Kory Olson and Amanda Vincent) The Routledge Handbook of the History of Paris since 1789. Routledge, 2025.

Journal articles and Book chapters

The Catacombs: Two Centuries of Pursuing the Past” in The Routledge Handbook of the History of Paris since 1789,” Routledge, 2025: 191-204.
“Disorder and the Dead in Revolutionary Paris” in Turmoil: Instability and Insecurity in eighteenth-century Francophone text, Síofra Pierse and Emma M. Dunne, eds. Liverpool University Press, 2022: 175-193.
“The Cemetery,” in The Routledge History of Death since 1800, Peter Stearns, ed. Routledge, 2021: 123-135.
“The Paris Catacombs: Remains and Reunion Beneath the Post-Revolutionary City,” French Historical Studies 40:3 (August 2017): 509-536.
“Cities of the Dead: Père Lachaise Cemetery and the Catacombs in Post-Revolutionary Paris” in The Urban Uncanny: A Collection of Interdisciplinary Studies. Lucy Huskinson, ed. Routledge, 2016: 75-89.

Teaching and Supervision

I teach modern European history, with an emphasis on the period between 1789 and 1914. My undergraduate modules include “Living with the Dead in Modern Europe,” a freshman seminar that examines the place of the dead in European culture and society, and two upper-level modules: “Postcards from Paris: Visitors Write the City of Light;” and “Making a Spectacle in Modern Europe.” At my previous institution, I regularly taught intensive classes about the French Revolution, Modern France, and nineteenth-century Europe.