Student in a boarding school for girls in Caen, then in propaedeutics at the Sorbonne, Rose-Marie Lagrave met teachers attached to the sharing of knowledge and the social climbing of children from lower classes. Michelle Perrot, Mona Ozouf, Eliane Deschamps, Jean-Francois Lyotard, Vladimir Jankelevitch, Raymond Aron, Georges Gurvitch, who directs her towards sociology, still little institutionalized. Working in a jewelery factory, she passes the four certificates that make her sociologist, then realizes a master's degree, under the direction of Henri Desroche, on a worker's cooperative of electrical wires. She then wrote a thesis under the direction of Placide Rambaud, on the literary representations of farmer-writers. She has been an independent contractor since 1972 at the Center for Rural Sociology, where she became a full member as head of works in 1976. She then took part in the major collective surveys conducted for the CORDES on groups of producers, GAEC... Having become a feminist and participating in Pierre Bourdieu's seminar, she then allowed herself to choose her research objects: women farmers, agrarian communism in Eastern Europe... Pioneer of gender studies, she participated in the women's history group at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS), then directed a group of researchers in the framework of the action thématique programmée “Women, Feminism and Research”. Elected directrice d'études in 1993, she created five research training workshops in social sciences in Central European countries, and founded the specialty “Gender, Politics, Sexuality” in the framework of the Master of Sociology of the EHESS. She has also taught in several Brazilian universities, at the National University of Bogotá, at universities in Central Europe and in the Maghreb, in Vietnam and in China.