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Continue reading →: “AI in the Academic World” keynote at Universidade Federal de Santa Maria’s cross-faculty conferenceSecrets to Patents’ PI, Natacha Klein Käfer, gave the opening keynote of the 40th Jornada Academica Integrada of the Universidade Federal de Santa Maria. This university-wide event is the largest of the institution, and every year it showcases the research being developed at the Federal University. In its 40 years…
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Continue reading →: New article on digital tools for tracing discourse change in midwifery manualsThe journal Current Research in Digital History has recently released a new article by the Secrets to Patents PI, Natacha Klein Käfer, on the shifts in German midwifery texts from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century that can be detected using digital tools. The article points to evidence of how…
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Continue reading →: Healing knowledge on focus at the History of Knowledge ConferenceThe project Secrets to Patents in collaboration with the Centre for Privacy Studies (DNRF138) organized a panel at the 2025 History of Knowledge Conference at Lund University. With presentations by Liam, Benison, Jelena Bakic, as well as Ida Vos and Natália da Silva Perez’s joint paper, the panel brought to…
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Continue reading →: ‘Secrets to Patents’ at the Association of Brazilianists in Europe EventPI Natacha Klein Käfer and Co-PI Beatriz Teixeira Weber organized a panel at the 2025 ABRE Congress dedicated to discussing the role of women in knowledge transmission, strategies of writing, traditional practices, and historical responses to reproductive, artistic, and intellectual work by women. Entitled MULHERES NO MUNDO TRANSATLÂNTICO: MOVIMENTOS, TRADIÇÕES…
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Continue reading →: New Postdoctoral ResearcherSecrets to Patents is excited to welcome our new postdoc, Angana Moitra, who will start her position at the Centre for Privacy Studies (University of Copenhagen). Angana will investigate how colonialist strategies of appropriating indigenous medicinal and pharmacological knowledge and reframing them as scientific discourse unfolded under British colonial rule…
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Continue reading →: New article on interdisciplinarity and ethicsA new article published by Natacha Klein Käfer, Emma Klakk, and Mette Birkedal Bruun came out in the journal Issues in Interdisciplinary Studies. “Ethics of Interdisciplinary Research Across Multiple Ranges of Proximity” explores how proximity affects interdisciplinary efforts, and how the principles of the ethics of care can ensure the…
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Continue reading →: ‘Secrets to Patents’ at the 2025 ISHTIP 16th Annual Workshop – “Intellectual Property and Capitalism”This June, the research environment Secrets to Patents joined the Annual Workshop of the International Society for the History and Theory of Intellectual Property (ISHTIP). This inspiring event took place in Madrid between 25-26 June 2025. With a fantastic mix of well-established and early-career scholars, the workshop highlighted perspectives from…
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Continue reading →: First international presentation in the project Secrets to PatentsThe research environment Secrets to Patents was officially launched on 15 May 2025. To kickstart the activities, the PI, Natacha Klein Käfer, participated together with the PhD candidate Hannah Hjorth in the conference Medicine, Slavery, and Race in the Atlantic World, organized by the project Medicine and the Making of…
Trans-Imperial Strategies for Keeping Medicines as Private Assets from 1500 to 1900
Secrets to Patents
The Project
The Research Environment Secrets to Patents investigates the long-term history of how life-saving and health-improving medicines became for-profit commodities from 1500 to 1900. Focusing on the Atlantic Colonial Nexus, the project’s team will investigate the strategies that different historical agents used to claim ownership of medicinal knowledge.
Funding
Secrets to Patents has been generously funded by the Swedish Research Council (2025-2030) and hosted at Lund University (SE), in collaboration with the Centre for Privacy Studies at the University of Copenhagen (DK) and the History Department of Universidade Federal de Santa Maria (BR).
Newsletter
Remain in touch with the project’s activities and publications
Secrets to Patents 