Monthly Archives: March 2026

Zoe Thomas, Collaborating Couples: Intimacy, Power, and Professional Work in the Anglophone World, c. 1800-1939

This research project will form my second book.

‘Collaborating Couples’ will constitute the first critical study of the professional and intimate histories of romantically attached Anglo-American couples who collaborated in the same field of work between 1850 and 1939. It brings together research into approximately 500 married and queer couples working across the arts and literature, politics and social reform, medicine and science, history and archaeology, and education. To date (with the kind support of the British Academy, Harvard University, and Vassar College), I have consulted archives relating to this project across Britain, Greece, and North America, encompassing diaries and love-tokens alongside scientific notebooks and political tracts. Departing from the traditional biographical focus on famous individual partnerships (usually painters), this research asserts the collective significance of this international network of couples in facilitating social, cultural, and political change at the advent of modernity: overturning expectations of intimate relationships, pioneering new approaches to education and professional work, and agitating for social reform.

You can find my first open-access article relating to this project (focusing specifically on Anglo-American literary couples in Historical Journal here: ‘Marriage, collaboration, and the literary mass market in the English-speaking world, c. 1870-1939.’

Please do also get in touch if you want to discuss collaborating couples further: z.thomas@bham.ac.uk

Programme: International Workshop ‘Power Couples? Collaborations at work and at home, c. 1750-1920s’

Venue: Georg Forster Haus, Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg

Download the Programme

Monday, May 11th

15.00 Introduction (Zoë Thomas, Sven Jaros)

15.15 Collaborative Couples in Academia

Chair: Dr. Brigitte Stenhouse (Open University, Milton Keynes)

Dr. Meghan Roberts (Bowdoin College, Brunswick/Maine) / Mathias Valverde (University of Strasbourg), Inventing the Scientific Power Couple in Eighteenth-Century France

Dr. Chantal Weber (University of Cologne), Separated, but together – the Lives of Anna and Siegfried Berliner in the Shadow of World War I

Celina Barszczewska (Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań), Bożena Stelmachowska and Wanda Brzeska as a “Power Couple” in Polish Intellectual Culture of the Interwar Period

Dr. Marie Linos (Université de Picardie Jules Verne), A Union of Souls and Minds? Intellectual Companionship Marriages Among Anglophone Couples of Scholars (1860-1920)

17.15 Coffee break

17.30 Navigating the Mechanisms of Modernity

Chair: Dr. Anne Kluger (Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg)

Dr. Zsuzsa Török (ELTE Research Centre for the Humanities, Budapest), Branding Emília: Editorial Partnership and Marital Collaboration in Családi Kör (1860–80)

Dr. Nathan Cordon (University of Birmingham), The Workmans Awheel: Curating Feminine Athletic Celebrity at the Dawn of the Twentieth Century

Dr. Magdalene Klassen (John Hopkins University, Baltimore), The Labour of Scandal: Jack and Lucille Johnson’s European Tour, 1912–1920

Tuesday, May 12th

9.00 Couples within Social / Political Movements

Chair: Dr. Matthias Freidank (UCL/Halle)

Marie Bak (Aarhus University), Serving Each Other: The Collaborative Marriage of Matilde and Fredrik Bajer

Dr. Irina Pelea (Titu Maiorescu University, Bucharest), Writing Revolution Together: Japanese Anarchists Itō Noe and Ōsugi Sakae on Prostitution as Economic Survival and the Fight for Abortion Rights

Anna Nakai (Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, Tokyo), Marriages, Affair (with Communism), Exile: Gertrud Bortstieber’s Early Transformation

10.30 Coffee Break

11.00 Working together in Politics and Philanthropy

Chair: Dr. Katja Castryck-Naumann (GWZO, Leipzig)

Dr. Martin Spychal (History of Parliament, London), ‘The two Mr Grotes’: the Political Power Couple of the 1830s?

Céline Leglaive-Perani (University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne), Power Couples in Philanthropy. the Case of Jewish Couples in Paris, 1850-1920

Dr. Aimée Fox (University of St. Andrews), ‘Sediment and not substance’: The intellectual and political partnership of Una and Richard Pope-Hennessy, c.1910–1923

12.30 Lunch Break

14.00 Collaboration within Colonial/Imperial Configurations

Chair: Prof. Yvonne Kleinmann (Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg)

Dr. Rajesh Prasad / Pradip Lamba (University of Dehli), Beyond the Zenana Walls: Indian Reform Couples and the Reimagining of Collaborative Authority in Colonial Bengal, 1820–1890

Dr. Tahmina Aslanova (Baku State University), Invisible Architects: Azerbaijani “Power Couples” and Gendered Collaboration in the Late Russian Empire

Corinne Ball (Migration Museum, Adelaide), Ruling the Ring. Wielding the Reins of Power in an Australian Circus, 1890–1914

15.30 Beyond the Muse and Genius Discourse: Collaboration in Arts and Cultures

Chair: Dr. Zoë Thomas (University of Birmingham)

Dr. Chanda Vander Hart / Günter Stummvoll (University for Continuing Education, Krems), Public Muses or Strategic Business Partners? Reframing the Marriages of Johann Strauss II

Prof. Anna Piotrowska (Jagiellonian University Kraków), Rigó Jancsi and Clara Ward-Chimay: Scandal, Performance, and the Making of a Power Couple in Fin-de-Siècle Europe

Martyna Zielinska (Université de Paris Cité), Catharine W. B. Ward and Henry S. Ward: Transatlantic marriage and American soft power in British Photography and Publishing (1893-1913)

17.00 Coffee Break

19.00 Public Roundtable “Who Carries? Who Shines? On Collaborative Work and Unequal Recognition in Academia,
Culture, and Society”

Venue: Kunstmuseum Moritzburg Halle (Saale)

Panel: Prof. Johanna Gehmacher (University of Vienna), PD Dr. Katrin Steffen (Nordost-Institut, Lüneburg), Dr. Christine Fornoff-Petrowski (Carl von Ossietzky Universität Oldenburg)

Moderation: Prof. Olaf Peters (Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg) and Katharina Eger M.A. (Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg)

Wednesday, May 13th

8.30 Beyond the Couple: Widows and Legacy Building

Chair: PD Dr. Katrin Steffen (Nordost-Institut, Lüneburg)

Dr. Francesca Antonelli (University of Bologna), After the Power Couple: Sociability, Friendship, and Memory among Widows of French Savants (1790s–1840s)

Dr. Caoilfhionn Ní Bheacháin / Dr. Angus Mitchell (University of Limerick), The Forging of Alice Stopford Green: From “Power Couple” Partnership to Independent Activist and Scholar

Dr. Sven Jaros (Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg), Seweryna Duchińska after Franciszek. Narrating a Collaborative Couple through Biography (1893–1905)

Dr. Elise Garritzen (University of Helsinki), From Power Couples to “Power Widows”: Collaborative History Writing after Death

10.30 End of workshop

Zsuzsa Török, Branding Emília. Editorial Partnership and Marital Collaboration in Családi Kör (1860–80)

This paper explores the editorial partnership between Emília Kánya (1828–1905), the first female editor in Hungary and the Habsburg Monarchy, and her husband, the writer, journalist, and teacher Mór Szegfi (1825–96). The paper positions the couple as influential figures whose collaboration shaped the development of women’s periodicals in the mid-to-late nineteenth century. Kánya’s two-decade editorship of Családi Kör (Family Circle, 1860–80) established her as a pivotal figure in Hungarian print culture and offered subsequent female editors a successful model for navigating emerging forms of popular media. However, this study argues that her editorial influence and public visibility were made possible by a broader support network, of which her husband was an integral part.

Drawing on previously overlooked archival sources, including Szegfi’s correspondence, the paper reconstructs the behind-the-scenes dynamics of their working relationship. It reveals that Szegfi was deeply involved in the production, management, and conceptual development of Családi Kör, providing strategic editorial guidance and content. By branding the journal with Emília’s first name, the couple cultivated a distinctive editorial identity that lent the publication a recognisable persona and a sense of intimacy in an increasingly diverse periodical market.

By focusing on the collaborative dimension of Kánya’s career, this paper challenges conventional narratives that dwell on the solitary struggle of early female editors. Instead, it emphasises how marital partnerships could facilitate creative and professional synergy, enabling women to exert cultural influence within and beyond the domestic sphere.