[3] As Switzerland offered her few opportunities as a historian after her doctorate, she began her academic career in America working on Cuba, and Colombia.

She was interested in emancipation movements and the racial question, and focused on how people demonstrated resilience to build a dignified life.

[5] Aline Helg claims that the slave populations of the Americas did not wait for their freedom to be granted, rather they built autonomous emancipation strategies.

[7] In her writing, she examines the means by which the enslaved became free[8] and found that active rebellion was not the most effective nor the most common form of emancipation.

[9][10] Aline Helg also wrote articles for different publications such as "Black Men, Racial Stereotyping, and Violence in the U.S. South and Cuba at the Turn of the Century," published online by Comparative Studies in Society and History.