Workshop | Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg, Germany | 11-13 May 2026
‘Power Couples? Collaborations at work and at home, c. 1750-1914’
Call for Papers, deadline – 1 September 2025
In recent decades, there has emerged an important wave of scholarship by historians, philosophers, literary scholars, biographers, and sociologists (amongst others), which has unveiled the crucial ‘hidden’ intellectual, social, and domestic labour women have provided throughout history in helping to make the careers and public reputations of their male colleagues, family members, and partners. This scholarship has illuminated the myriad harmful ways women’s historical labour has been effaced, during their lifetimes, in the subsequent historiography, and in archival institutions. The reasons why female accomplishments have long been marginalised in public consciousness has often been discussed under the term ‘Matilda Effect’—a concept that has also gained traction in wider public discourse.
However, a key phenomenon within collaborative cultures remains strikingly under-researched: the role played by couples whose collaborations were openly acknowledged, and the impact they have had on the making of modern political, intellectual, professional, academic, and religious cultures. As such, this international workshop will bring together scholars from diverse disciplinary backgrounds and career stages to explore this phenomenon. Our focus is the period spanning the mid eighteenth century to the early twentieth century, a period marked by notable changes in women’s rights, access to education, religious thinking, means of travel and mass communication, as well as the development of modern professions, civil society, and the nation-state. In particular, the workshop is interested in historicising the roots of the term ‘power couple’. Although this term originated in Anglophone contexts in the 1980s, the preceding centuries had already seen an unprecedented growth of couples attempting to carve out new public reputations together, be this in politics and social reform, universities, religious contexts, business ownership, the arts, medicine, and across a range of other fields.
The workshop seeks to explore the following questions:
1.) How did different couples organise and maintain their collaborative work and domestic lives?
2.) How did gender, race, ethnicity, and class shape collaborative endeavours?
3.) What similarities and differences were there between queer collaborating couples and those in legal marital partnerships?
4.) How were collaborations shaped by different local, national, and global contexts?
5.) What synergies were there between different fields and networks?
6.) To what extent did couples who collaborated seek to promote greater equality in their wider, respective areas of work?
During the workshop, participants will discuss their different methodological approaches including biographical, quantitative, and digital methods, and will examine diverse source materials, such as correspondence, periodicals, publications, diaries, and photographs.
We very much welcome ‘work-in-progress’ papers and suggestions for non-traditional ways of discussing this topic. A peer-reviewed publication of the workshop’s outcomes is also planned.
The deadline for submissions of interest is 1 September 2025.
The organisers are Dr Sven Jaros (sven.jaros@geschichte.uni-halle.de) and Dr Zoe Thomas (z.thomas@bham.ac.uk). Please email both organisers by this date with a rough title and a document of approximately 250 words about what you would like to discuss at the workshop. We are currently applying for funding for travel and accommodation for participants. Please let us know if you require this to attend. We are also hoping to make elements of the workshop hybrid, although in person attendance is preferred.
Image: Wiki Commons