Digital resources in the Social Sciences and Humanities OpenEdition Our platforms OpenEdition Books OpenEdition Journals Hypotheses Calenda Libraries OpenEdition Freemium Follow us

The organizing committee

Audrey Célestine is an Associate professor in American studies at the University of Lille where she teaches U.S. history and social science. She’s a political scientist focusing on social movements, collective identity and race in a comparative perspective (France and the U.S.) and the post-colonial trajectories of French and U.S. Caribbean territories (Martinique, Guadeloupe, Puerto Rico). She is currently a junior member of the Institut Universitaire de France (IUF) and a visiting professor at New York University. 

She recently published La fabrique des identités. L’encadrement politique des minorités caribéennes à Paris et New York (Paris: Karthala, 2018) and Une famille française. Des Antilles à Dunkerque en passant par l’Algérie (Paris: Textuel, 2018).


Claire Delahaye is an Associate Professor of American studies and History at the University of Paris-Est Marne-la-Vallée (France) and a member of LISAA (Laboratoire Littératures, Savoirs et Arts). She graduated from École Normale Supérieure and Sorbonne Nouvelle. Her doctoral research scrutinized Woodrow Wilson and the struggle for woman suffrage from a national and transnational perspective. It was awarded the best dissertation prize at Sorbonne Nouvelle and published as Wilson contre les femmes (Paris: Presses de la Sorbonne Nouvelle, 2012).

Her publications focus on presidential history, the Great War and woman suffrage. The book she co-wrote with Béatrice Bijon, Suffragistes et suffragettes. La conquête du droit de vote des femmes au Royaume-Uni et aux États-Unis (Lyon: ENS Éditions, 2017), is a selection of British and American suffragists’ writings translated into French with critical introductions.

Her current research project addresses the issues of historiography and memory of the woman suffrage struggle after the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment. She was a visiting fellow at the Kluge Center at the Library of Congress in the spring of 2018. Her recent publications include “‘A Tract in Fiction’: Woman Suffrage Literature and the Struggle for the Vote,” European Journal of American Studies 11:1 (2016) and “Le lobbying des suffragistes au Congrès (1913-1920),” Politique Américaine 27 (2016): 63-83. 


Simon Grivet (b. 1977) is Associate Professor at University of Lille since 2017. He specializes on legal history, crime and punishment, federal justice and the American South. He obtained his Ph.D in American history from the EHESS (Paris) on the history of the death penalty in California (2011).


Nicolas Martin-Breteau is Associate Professor of U.S. History and American Studies at the University of Lille. He is a researcher at the Centre d’étude en civilisations, lettres et langues étrangères (CECILLE). He is a member of the editorial board of Critique internationale: Revue comparative de sciences sociales.

He specializes on contemporary African American history, most notably the long history of black Americans’ political mobilizations for racial justice. Nicolas Martin-Breteau has published several articles in peer-reviewed journals on these questions. He has recently published the first French edition of W.E.B. Du Bois’ 1899 classic The Philadelphia Negro (Paris: La Découverte, 2019). He is currently editing the manuscript of his forthcoming book tentatively entitled Bodies Politic: Sport in African American Struggles for Justice in Washington, D.C. (Paris: Editions de l’EHESS, 2020).

In order to pursue his current research on Du Bois, the Black Lives Matter movement, and the history of anti-racism in the United States, he has been awarded a Fulbright fellowship as to work as invited scholar at the W.E.B. Du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst during the 2020 Spring semester.


Hélène Quanquin is Professor of American Studies at the University of Lille, where she teaches U.S. history. She is a women’s and gender historian, with a focus on U.S. feminisms and nineteenth-century reform movements.

She has published many articles and book chapters on abolitionism and women’s rights in collective volumes and journal issues (Louisiana State University Press, Rochester University Press, American Studies Journal, Revue Française d’Études Américaines, Epistolaire). Her book on « women’s rights men », Men in the American Women’s Rights Movement, 1830-1890: Cumbersome Allies, will be published by Routledge in 2020. She was visiting professor at Brown University (2008) and the University of Texas at Austin (2014).

Hélène Quanquin’s research has been funded by the Schlesinger Library, the Massachusetts Historical Society, the American Antiquarian Society, the Sophia Smith Collection and the French Association of American Studies (AFEA).


Fatma Ramdani is an Associate Professor at the University of Lille where she teaches American history and society. Her primary research interests are American feminist movements and their transnational dimensions, with a special emphasis on women’s reproductive rights. She is also interested in African American women’s contributions to black thought and American history.

She has published several articles and book chapters on mainstream and African American feminist movements, women’s archives and gender issues at the United Nations.


OpenEdition suggests that you cite this post as follows:
Audrey Celestine (November 20, 2019). The organizing committee. How long must women wait for liberty? Retrieved March 19, 2025 from https://doi.org/10.58079/sc6q


Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.