Abstract: This is joint work with Jules Martel. I will explain our new way to construct the Drinfeld-Jimbo type of quantum group Uq(g) for a semisimple Lie algebra g, by using homology with local coefficients of configuration spaces. Since the main result is that two fairly technical things are the same, I’ll try to describe each of them in an accessible way. From my biased perspective, the topology helps the algebraic definitions mentally “click”. Simple diagrams can represent sets of configurations of points in the plane that correspond to elements of the Hopf algebra, and operations like multiplication and comultiplication become fairly natural.