The press coverage Holt’s Matrimonial Agency received; its extensive publicity budget combined with the numerous personal advertisements they published in Australian newspapers made Holt’s a household name. Benefitting from a corpus of nearly 1000 articles dealing with the agency or its owners, I will share the experiences of a shrewd businesswoman. Annie Holt was a fierce and astute woman who ran a successful business, weathering economic depressions, amendments to the Victoria marriage act, as well as the sudden loss of her husband. Annie embodied the new woman while remaining attached to the patriarchal institution of marriage.  The history of her agency highlights the social and cultural anxieties the commodification of marriage sparked.

Professor Mélanie Méthot has been researching bigamy in Canada and Australia for many years. In 2020, she received a SSHRC grant for her research project
“Marrying Too Much: Bigamy in Australia.” She has recently developed a website featuring bigamy stories and their relevance. Her engaging presentation style has her audience feeling stimulated and enriched.

Méthot has a special interest in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL). In addition to founding the Augustana Conference on Undergraduate Research and Innovative Teaching (ACURIT), she regularly shares her expertise at SoTL conferences.

This is a special National Centre of Biography 'Feedback Merchants' Seminar