Cindy Ermus is the Charles and Linda Wilson Associate Professor in the History of Medicine and Director of the Humanities in Medicine program at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Formerly, she was an assistant professor at the University of Lethbridge (2015-2019) and at the University of Texas at San Antonio (2019-2024), where she was also Director of the Medical Humanities program and was promoted with tenure in 2024.

Ermus teaches courses on European and Atlantic history, the history of diseases and disasters, and the Age of Revolutions. She specializes in the history of medicine and the environment, especially epidemics and other crises, in eighteenth-century France and the Atlantic World. She has also published on digital history and the future of the historical profession. Ermus’s work has been featured in The Washington Post, The Atlantic, The Verge, Stat News, The Miami Herald and El Nuevo Herald, and she has been a guest on BBC World News, Univision, Al-Jazeera, and others.

Her book, The Great Plague Scare of 1720: Disaster and Diplomacy in the Eighteenth-Century Atlantic World (Cambridge University Press, 2023), is a transnational study of the Plague of Provence of 1720 (or Great Plague of Marseille), one of the last outbreaks of plague in Western Europe. By tracing responses to the threat of infection throughout a network of major eighteenth-century port cities, Ermus explores the ways in which the crisis influenced society, politics, and commerce beyond France in neighboring regions and in the Atlantic colonies. The completion of this project was funded in part by the National Endowment for the Humanities, McKnight, Ben Weider Fellowships, and the University of Lethbridge. 

In 2024, The Great Plague Scare of 1720 was awarded the Urban History Association’s Lynn Hollen Lees Book Prize for best book in European urban history published in 2023.

Her second, shorter monograph—called an “Element”—is part of the Cambridge Elements series on Global Urban History. Urban Disasters (Cambridge UP, 2023) is a brief history of catastrophe that looks at case studies from around the globe over the last three-hundred years. It introduces the reader to central concepts that help define the study of disasters and examines the relationship between cities and catastrophes including earthquakes, hurricanes, fires, and epidemics. The book concludes with a brief look at the ongoing effects of climate change and the future of cities.

She’s also the editor of a volume on disaster and risk in the Gulf South that was published with LSU Press in 2018. In her research and in the classroom, Ermus aims to tie her work to the present as much as possible to emphasize the relevance of historical study in the modern world. This edited volume, then, is a product of these efforts, and of her personal interest in the region in which she grew up. 

Currently, Ermus is at work on a global history of epidemics, co-authored with Claire Edington, that is under contract with the University of California Press. Epidemics: A Global History tells a new global history of epidemic disease. It foregrounds voices and regions that for too long were pushed to the margins of traditional histories. It explores not only how diseases spread but also how different societies understood and responded to them. Familiar narratives—the Black Death, the introduction of smallpox to the Americas, cholera’s impact on urban sanitation, influenza, HIV/AIDS, and more—are revisited through perspectives that emphasize new actors and alternative sites from which to tell this global story.

Ermus is also co-editor, with Bryan Banks, of a forthcoming volume titled The Global Age of Revolutions: A History from 1650 to the Present (UVA Press, The Revolutionary Age series, 2026). Featuring concise essays in the style of Age of Revolutions and an afterword by Lynn Hunt, this book challenges traditional understandings that define the Age of Revolutions as lasting from 1775 to 1848 and occurring within Europe and the Atlantic world, and instead stretches these boundaries from the late seventeenth century through the present day and across the globe. In bringing together a diverse range of voices and approaches, it invites readers to rethink longstanding assumptions about revolutions and their global dimensions, both within and beyond traditional temporal and spatial frameworks.

In 2023, she was elected Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.

Beyond her research and the classroom, she is also co-series editor for France Overseas: Studies in Empire and Decolonization of the University of Nebraska Press (send a pitch!), as well as co-founder and co-executive editor for the digital, open-access, peer-reviewed publication www.AgeofRevolutions.com, which explores themes and moments in the history of revolutions. 

CV

Teaching

HIST/MRST 212 – History of Early Modern Europe

HIST/HMED 349 – History of Epidemics: From the Black Death to COVID-19

HMED 397 – Directed Experience in Health Care Humanities in Medicine

Selected Publications

For a more complete listing (including digital projects, invited talks, and scholarly journalism), please refer to Prof. Ermus’s website.

Monographs

• The Great Plague Scare of 1720: Disaster and Diplomacy in the Eighteenth-Century Atlantic World. Cambridge University Press, 2023. Awarded the Urban History Association’s Lynn Hollen Lees Book Prize for best book in European urban history published in 2023.
• Urban Disasters. Cambridge Elements series in Global Urban History, Cambridge University Press, 2023.

Co-authored Books

• Epidemics: A Global History, co-authored with Claire Edington (UC San Diego). Under contract with University of California Press.

Edited Volumes

• Age of Revolutions: A Global History, 1650 to the Present, co-edited with Bryan Banks. UVA Press, 2026.
• Environmental Disaster in the Gulf South: Two Centuries of Catastrophe, Risk, and Resilience. Baton Rouge: LSU Press, 2018.

Editorships

• 2023 – present -- Editor, France Overseas Series of the University of Nebraska Press
• 2015 – present -- Co-Executive Editor, Age of Revolutions, ageofrevolutions.com

Selected Grants, Awards, and Honors

• 2024 -- Awarded the Urban History Association’s Lynn Hollen Lees Book Prize for best book in European urban history published in 2023
• 2022 – 2024 -- US Department of Education, Office of Postsecondary Education, Undergraduate International Studies and Foreign Language (UISFL) Award. Co-PI with Glenn Martinez (UTSA)
• 2024 -- Nominated for the University Excellence Award for Research Achievement, University of Texas at San Antonio
• 2023 -- Elected Fellow of the Royal Historical Society
• 2023 -- 2022 Stumberg Researcher of the Year Award, University of Texas at San Antonio
• Jan. – Dec. 2022 -- National Endowment for the Humanities, Award for Faculty at Hispanic-Serving Institutions for research in the humanities
• 2021 – 2022 -- Nominated for the President’s Distinguished Achievement Award for Teaching Excellence, University of Texas at San Antonio
• 2014 – 2015 -- Nominated for the Faculty of the Year Award, Florida Southwestern State College
• 2013 – 2014 -- Nominated for the Outstanding Teaching Assistant Award, Florida State University
• 2012 – 2013 -- Awarded the Joe Richardson Award for Excellence in Teaching, Florida State University

Expertise

• 18th-century France and Atlantic World
• History of Medicine
• History of Disasters
• Age of Revolutions