The Team

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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

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

PhDs

Daniela da Silva Martins

PhD at the History Department (Universidade Federal de Santa Maria), with a thesis on women’s health and knowledge circulation in midwifery manuals from seventeenth-century England.

danielaa_dasilvamartins@hotmail.com

Systems Developer

Mathias Johansson

mathias.johansson@kultur.lu.se

Interns

Cecilie Skou (2025)

Gabriella Qvist (2025-2026)

Jasmine Freij (2025-2026)

Associated Scholars

Daniel França Oliveira

(Instituto Nacional da Propriedade Industrial – Brazil)

dfranca@inpi.gov.br

Liam Benison

Researcher in the Centre for English Translation and Anglo-Portuguese
Studies (CETAPS) (University of Porto), and an affiliated scholar of the
Centre for Privacy Studies (University of Copenhagen). He studies the
history of utopian imagination with a focus on knowledges of privacy,
public health, geography, and Indigenous-European exchange.

lbenison@letras.up.pt

Jelena Bakić 

Affiliated scholar at the Centre for Privacy Studies (University of Copenhagen) and CITCEM (University of Porto). Her research interests include the Italian Renaissance, paratextual and epistolary writings, privacy studies, the history of emotions, the history of knowledge, digital humanities, Italian paleography, and the recovery of early modern women authors and other marginalized voices and knowledge traditions. 

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).