Martin Luther Univ. Halle-Wittenberg; Univ. of Birmingham; Nordost-Institute; Katharina Eger, Sven Jaros, Katrin Steffen, and Zoë Thomas (Web)
Zeit: 11.-13.05.2026
Ort: Halle an der Saale
Programme (PDF)
In recent decades, an important body of scholarship has exposed the “hidden” intellectual, social, domestic, and emotional labour women have contributed to the careers and public reputations of male colleagues, relatives, and partners. Nonetheless, one phenomenon remains notably under-researched: the dynamics of couples.
This workshop offers a comprehensive, multi-disciplinary exploration of this phenomenon in modern political, intellectual, professional, artistic, entrepreneurial, and religious cultures. It brings together scholars of varying disciplines (including history, musicology, literary, politics, art history, museum studies, parliamentary archives) and career stages from across Western, Central, and Eastern Europe, as well as from Asia and Australia, to investigate the phenomenon of collaborative couples on a global scale. Our focus is the mid-eighteenth to early-twentieth centuries—a time of accelerated social and technological change, expansion of rights, and reconfiguration of professions, civil society, and nation-states. The workshop will analyse collaborative couples active within academia, politics and welfare, social and political movements, the arts and entertainment industries, as well as colonial and imperial settings. Papers will not only investigate legal martial partnerships, but queer and same gender couples.
By adopting an inclusive framework which explores synergies and differences across the longue durée, we will deepen our understanding of the intersections of race, ethnicity, nationality, gender, and sexuality in the making—and devaluing—of collaborative endeavours, as well as their collective impact on modern society more widely. The workshop includes a public roundtable on the so- called “Mathilda-Effect”. Both events are designed to inject a much-needed historical perspective into debates about women’s opportunities, rights, care work, and emotional labour—especially important in the face of the present backlash and attempts of re-traditionalization.
Source: HSozKult (Web)
RundPunkt 11 
Katja Sabisch, Änne Söll, Jule Fischer, and Christian Wandhoff, Institute of Art History, DFG project „Viscourses of Adolescent Masculinities in the Global North since 1960“, Ruhr Univ. Bochum (RUB) 
Jüdisches Museum Wien 
Irene Messinger (Hochschule Campus Wien, Department Sozialwissenschaften, BA Soziale Arbeit) und Zwischennutzungsprojekt mittendrin.wien