Fleur Hopkins‑Loféron is a French art historian and researcher whose work explores the strange, forgotten edges of scientific imagination in visual culture. A graduate of Paris 1 Panthéon‑Sorbonne and the BnF, she earned her doctorate studying how early science‑fiction and optical instruments shaped the merveilleux‑scientifique, a neglected literary and artistic movement blending wonder, science, and the supernatural. Her thesis received the 2020 PSL Humanities Prize and led to a major exhibition at the Bibliothèque nationale de France.

Her postdoctoral research at the CNRS (UMR 7172 THALIM) expanded her focus to the diffusion of fakirism in early 20th‑century French performance culture—an unexpected crossroads of illusion, mysticism, and media spectacle. Alongside this, she investigates contemporary science‑fiction’s response to the COVID‑19 pandemic, the evolution of scientific imagination in early illustrated magazines, and the cultural networks that shaped the rise, fall, and rediscovery of French speculative fiction.

Hopkins‑Loféron is also an active cultural critic and author. She has published widely—from essays on Japanese animation to studies of gothic icons—and released two major books in 2023: Mercredi Addams, icône gothique and Voir l’invisible, a visual history of the merveilleux‑scientifique. Her work consistently bridges scholarship and storytelling, reviving forgotten genres and revealing how science, fantasy, and visual culture intertwine.