Hélène Quanquin is a Professor of American Studies at the University of Lille (France). She studies 19th-century reform movements and activists. She is primarily interested in the mutual influence between the personal and the political and the different sites where political work is done and ideas are produced. She has published essays in European and American journals and books. She has received fellowships from the Massachusetts Historical Society, the Schlesinger Library, the American Antiquarian Society, the Sophia Smith Collection and the Association Française d’Etudes Américaines.