historical research


My academic research broadly focuses on the themes of urban death, policing, medicine, forensics, crime and photography from the nineteenth-century to the present day. My PhD thesis is on the morgues of Paris and New York from 1864-1914, and I am currently working on projects relating to the history of crime scene photography, an exploration of morgues as a creative muse, and the management of the unknown dead at American pauper cemeteries.

I am available for public talks, lectures and historical consultancy work internationally.


PODCASTS & BROADCASTING


My research has recently featured on:

BBC Radio 3: Free Thinking

Viking burials, preserving archaeology in Uganda, the morgues of Paris and New York and the medieval attitude to dying are our topics as Chris Harding hears about new research from archaeologists Marianne Hem Eriksen and Pauline Harding, and historians Cat Byers and Harriet Soper.

Listen to Free Thinking: Approaches to Death here.

Criminal Podcast

Have you ever wondered about the real story behind the famous Inconnue de la Seine, the beautiful drowned woman from the Paris morgue who became “most kissed face of all time”?

Listen to Episode 223: The Unknown Woman here.

History Hit’s After Dark Podcast

1. Delving into the history of the Paris morgue, with a story full of poignant humour, Donald Trump, and party hats. 

Listen to The Paris Morgue's Dark Story here.

2. According to legend, Sawney Bean and Agnes "Black" Douglas raised a clan of cannibals in a remote Scottish cave. They killed and ate unlucky travellers on lonely roads. This went on for decades with more than a thousand perishing. Who invented this gruesome story? Why? And why has Sawney Bean become a kind of cult hero in Scotland itself?

Listen to Cannibalism in Scotland: Legend of Sawney Bean here.

3. The unclaimed dead of New York City's streets and rivers were once brought to the notorious New York Morgue. It's a history that has never been studied before, full of dark stories and buried secrets.

Listen to The New York Morgue’s Terrible Secrets here.

PUBLIC TALKS

** UPCOMING**: SHOT DEAD: Crime Scene Photography in Art and Culture

7pm on October 22nd, 2024 at The Century Club, London, UK

Originally introduced in late nineteenth-century Paris, crime scene photography was designed to capture an accurate, objective overview of a serious crime scene. This budding technology was then adopted by police departments around the world, quickly becoming an essential tool for criminal investigation.

But within a few decades, the rise of tabloid journalism and the work of photojournalists such as the American photographer Weegee helped transform what was once a private forensic document - and visual record - into a popular cultural style. This “crime scene aesthetic” can now be found everywhere from museum exhibitions and Hollywood films to fashion campaigns, music videos, contemporary photography and even reality TV.

In this talk, Catriona Byers will delve into key moments in the development of the crime scene aesthetic, tracing the shift from crime-solving tool to commercially valuable artistic staple that stretches from Taxi Driver and Twin Peaks to Taylor Swift and America’s Next Top Model. Why do these photos continue to capture the public imagination? And what does this ultimately say about our enduring relationship to glamour, sex, death, true crime, and violent aesthetic imagery?

Tickets available here.

Previous events:

LONDON: The Paris Morgue: A Dark and Deadly History - 7pm GMT February 5th 2024 for the Last Tuesday Society at the Viktor Wynd Museum (get tickets here SOLD OUT)

NEW YORK / ONLINE: Drop Dead Gorgeous: Fashion, Photography, and the Crime Scene Aesthetic - 6pm EST on Monday May 1st 2023 for Morbid Anatomy (get tickets here)

LONDON: The Paris Morgue: Dark Tourism, True Crime and Morbid Medicine - 7pm GMT March 13th 2023 for the Last Tuesday Society at the Viktor Wynd Museum (get tickets here SOLD OUT)

NEW YORK / ONLINE: The Morgue As A Muse: Art, Aesthetics and the Anonymous Dead - 7pm EST on Monday January 30th 2023 for Morbid Anatomy (get tickets here)

LONDON: The Paris Morgue: Dark Tourism, True Crime and Morbid Medicine - 1.30pm GMT on Sunday October 23rd, 2022 for London Month of the Dead at Brompton Cemetery Chapel (get tickets here)

PARIS: The Paris Morgue as a Muse: Art and Inspiration Among the Anonymous Dead - 10.30am CEST on Saturday October 15th, 2022 for Morbid Anatomy at the Musee Fragonard d’Alfort (get tickets here)

PUBLICATIONS

CONFERENCE PAPERS

2023

BrANCH 2023 at Queen’s College, University of Oxford - September 22-24, 2023:

  • Paper title: ‘From Sinner to Statistic: Investigations into Suicide in Gilded Age New York’

2022

UNC-KCL Transatlantic Conference 2022 at University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill - September 19-20, 2022:

  • Paper title: ‘Medicine, Manipulation and the Anonymous Dead: Exploring the uses of the body at the Morgues of Paris and New York’

HOTCUS Annual Conference 2022 at the University of Edinburgh - June 20-22, 2022:

  • Paper title: ‘The invention of immortality: photography at the New York City Morgue’

  • Keynote Panel Presentation: ‘Beyond the Back-Alley Butcher: Constructing Abortion’s Criminality through NYPD Crime Scene Photography, c.1928-1945’

UNC-KCL Transatlantic Conference 2022 at King’s College London - May 11-12, 2022: "

  •  Paper title: ‘Medical Authority and Manipulated Bodies at the Morgues of Paris and New York’

BrANCH 2022: Nineteenth-Century America in Atlantic Context at the Kinder Institute, University of Missouri - April 7-9, 2022:

  • Paper title: Death Across the Pond: Managing the Unclaimed Dead at the Nineteenth-Century Morgues of Paris and New York’

Imagining The Dead: Capturing The Dead in Art and Culture as part of the Grave Matters Online Seminar Series - April 4, 2022:

  • Paper title: ‘Photographing the Dead at the Paris Morgue’

2021

HOTCUS PGR/ECR Conference : Medicine, Disease, and Disability in the Twentieth Century United States (Online) - September 5-6, 2021:

  • ·Paper title: ‘Policing the dead in the modern metropolis: the case of Hart Island, New York.’

AMPS: CITIES IN A CHANGING WORLD: QUESTIONS OF CULTURE, CLIMATE AND DESIGN at City Tech, CUNY, New York / Online- 16-18 June, 2021:

  • Paper title: ‘Managing New York’s Unclaimed Dead, 1868 – Present Day’

Until Death Do Us Part: Historical Perspectives on Death and Those Left Behind, c.1300-c.1900 at Royal Holloway, University of London / Online - 15-16 April, 2021:

  • Paper title: ‘“The gathering place of sin and death”: social order and public perception at the Paris morgue’


ACADEMIC CV

2020 - 2024: PhD in History - King’s College London

Thesis - Death as an institution: managing the anonymous dead at the morgues of Paris and New York, c. 1864-1914.

Funded by: The Royal Historical Society | Economic History Society | Scottish International Education Trust | Historians of the Twentieth Century United States (HOTCUS) | The Reid Trust | Society for the Study of French History | British Association for American Studies (BAAS) | British Society for Historians of Science | Chalk Valley History Trust | British American Nineteenth-Century Historians (BrANCH) | The Royal Society

2017 - 2019: MA (Distinction) in Urban History - University of London Institute in Paris

Dissertation - Medicine, morality and the anonymous dead: The Paris Morgue, 1864-1907

Funded by: ULIP Nathan, Quinn & Edmond Scholarship.

2009 -2013: BA (2:1) in History & French - University of Manchester

Dissertation - Visible Evidence of Invisible Phenomena: Photography, Science and Spiritism in Late Nineteenth-Century Paris.