HISTORICISING THE PRIVATISATION OF HEALING KNOWLEDGE

PrivHealth aims to establish the first history of the process of privatisation of healing knowledge.

Combining methods from history of knowledge and tools from computational history, PrivHealth demonstrates how a legal framework that guaranteed that healing knowledge could be kept as a private asset arose from colonial exploitation and knowledge circulation between 1700 and 1900.

The results of PrivHealth will provide a nuanced historical framework that will both shape academic historical debates and inform discussions over intellectual property rights in the medical and pharmaceutical fields at a societal level.