The Project
The Team
Events
Publications
Blog

Secrets to Patents

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

The Team

Principal Investigator

Natacha Klein Käfer
Assistant Professor at the Centre for Privacy Studies (University of Copenhagen) and Researcher at the History Department (Lund University)

nkk@teol.ku.dk / natacha.klein_kafer@hist.lu.se

Co-PIs

Beatriz Teixeira Weber
Professor at the History Department (Universidade Federal de Santa Maria)

beatriztweber@gmail.com

Paolo Astorri
Assistant Professor at the Centre for Privacy Studies (University of Copenhagen) and Researcher at the History Department (Lund University)

paa@teol.ku.dk

Research Assistant

Cecilia Lundström
Project assistant

cecilia.lundstrom@hist.lu.se

Researchers

Angana Moitra

Postdoctoral Researcher at the Centre for Privacy Studies and Assistant Professor at OP Jindal Global University, researching East-West colonial connections in healing practices from 1600 to contemporary ramifications

amo@teol.ku.dk

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

Recent posts