Emma Leahy

Emma Louise Leahy is a researcher interested in cultural heritage production and group identity formation in Europe, Eurasia, and West Asia. She graduated magna cum laude from The Hertie School in Berlin with a MA in International Affairs and is currently a doctoral candidate in the History of Europe programme at Università di Roma “La Sapienza,” where she focuses on the relationship between public art and national identity in Ukraine and Russia. She has a special interest in monumental facade decoration across the former Second World from the medieval period to the 21st century and has conducted fieldwork and documental photography expeditions in Russia, Ukraine, Bulgaria, and Germany. Her research has been supported by fellowships from the Hertie School Centre for International Security (2020-2022), Central European University (2022), and the US Department of Education (2013). She is the author of peer-reviewed articles “Filling the Void: Urban Murals and National Identity in Russia and Ukraine After 2010” (Romanian Journal of Political Science, 2022), and “Collective Responses to the Black Plague in Northern Russia: The ritual of the one-day church” (DRUM Press, 2022). Fluent in English and French, she also speaks Spanish, Italian, German, Latin and Russian.