Trans-Imperial Strategies for Keeping Medicines as Private Assets from 1500 to 1900

‘Secrets to Patents’ at the Association of Brazilianists in Europe Event

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Natacha Klein Käfer

16 Oct 2025

‘Secrets to Patents’ at the Association of Brazilianists in Europe Event

PI 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 E MIGRAÇÕES, and taking place on September 18, the panel had participants and presenters from multiple disciplines. In total, the panel had 12 presentations from historians, literary scholars, ethnographers, artists, and policy specialists.

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).

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Secrets to Patents