From Curie to Champagne
Here’s the elevator pitch about me. I have a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature, a discipline I’ve never held a position in. Went on to become Professor in Library- and Information Science, a discipline I’ve no training in. Finally, I ended up Professor in Mediated Culture, something that doesn’t really exist as a discipline at all. Throughout twenty-five undisciplined years, I’ve always described myself as an interdisciplinary scholar of intellectual property. I still do. But now, as Professor Emerita, I have the freedom to carve out a new kind of space for myself. About intellectual property, but still. Making Marie Curie. Intellectual Property and Celebrity Culture in an Age of Information (University of Chicago Press, 2015) was a first attempt to take my interest in intellectual property to a wider audience. Now I’m working on a book about Champagne that I hope will reach even further and end up the kind of non-fiction I like to read myself.
About Me
Professor Emerita, Linköping University, Sweden.
Apart from writing and giving talks on my various interests, I continue to do “traditional” Emerita stuff: consultancies related to research applications, for instance to the European Research Council; evaluations for promotions; as well as participating as much as possible in fora regarding academic and “crossover” publishing, especially in the humanities. I’m happiest when in Paris, working at my favorite library BnF and living neighborhood life in the part of the 20th arrondissement where we have small studio. Other things that make me happy? My family, drinking and collecting champagne (obviously), Georges Perec and BTS.
You can reach me at eva.hemmungs.wirten@liu.se
Champagne
So, after my book on Curie I received an ERC Advanced Investigator Grant for a project about patents. PASSIM, or “Patents as Scientific Information, 1895-2020” ran between 2017-2023. Apart from leading the project, my own contribution consisted of writing three articles. I always knew, however, that once I had done what I promised to do, I wanted to write another book. Articles dominate academic publishing, but they are very formatted (in every respect, basically) and I was keen to get back to another way of working and another way of writing. I also had another ambition: to see if I could take my years of experience with intellectual property and write about it for a wider audience. I love writing. Reading, too.. Some might find it counterintuitive that for me, IP was in a sense this gateway into champagne, but champagne was also a seductive possibility of trying to figure out why I found IP so fascinating as a field. So, this is what I’m working on right now: the story of the politics and power struggles that have emerged around one objective: protecting the name or designation champagne so that it can remain synonymous with celebration, style, taste and the good life. It’s a book in equal parts of magic and money. What’s ultimately at stake is the reputational value that the name champagne represents. Which very much involves IP.
Three Academic Highlights
that involved Champagne
1994
When I received my first grant to go to the United States. It came from the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation and was for a research stay at Duke University. I still remember reading the letter (this was before e-mail, obviously) and being so excited that I bought champagne for the staff at the kids’ day-care. I’ve had the privilege of returning the the US many times for longer and shorter stays. One more round at Duke as a doctoral candidate and then a STINT post-doc at UNC-Chapel Hill in 2001-2002, but this grant was special.
2017
The year I got my ERC Advanced Grant. Thanks to seed money from The Bank of Sweden Tercentenary Foundation and a fellowship to the (then) Chemical Heritage Institution (now Science History Institute) in Philadelphia in the summer of 2016, I was able to write a successful proposal. Because the freedom they provide, ERC grants are true game changers in research, for all disciplines but certainly for scholars in the humanities. I was overjoyed when I got it and it was a highlight of my career.
2025
When I became Emerita. We held our final project meeting in PASSIM in 2023 (as you can see from the image above, it ended on a happy note in custom-made PASSIM jerseys). I had the privilege of working with a truly brilliant team. My doctoral students were done and had become Ph.Ds. I wanted something new. It was the perfect time to pack that part of my life in. It’s a privilege to be able to conclude things and move on to new challenges!
Publications and more
A few select things (for those who need all the nitty-gritty, a short and long CV will be posted here very soon)
Books
Making Marie Curie: Intellectual Property and Celebrity Culture in an Age of Information Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2015 (paperback 2016).
Cosmopolitan Copyright: Law and Language in the Translation Zone. Uppsala: Meddelanden från Institutionen för ABM vid Uppsala universitet 4, 2011.
Terms of Use: Negotiating the Jungle of the Intellectual Commons. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008.
No Trespassing: Authorship, Intellectual Property Rights, and the Boundaries of Globalization. Toronto: The University of Toronto Press, 2004. Chapter Two, “Inventing F. David: Author(ing) Translation:” Reprinted in Alexis Weedon, ed. The History of the Book in the West: 1914-2000. Ashgate Publishing, 2010Denna tjänst är utformad för att effektivt tillgodose dina specifika behov.
Articles
(2023) “Patents of Persuasion: Tempo-metrics and the Shaping of Knowledge About Knowledge,” 2023 Special issue on “Entangled Temporalities,” in Journal for the History of Knowledge, Vol. 4, pp. 215-238,https://journalhistoryknowledge.org/article/view/12419
(2021) “In the Service of Secrecy: An Enveloped History of Priority, Proof and Patents,” Journal of Material Culture 26(3), pp. 241-61. https://doi.org/10.1177/13591835211028880.
(2019) “How Patents Became Documents, or Dreaming of Technoscientific Order, 1895-1937,” Journal of Documentation 75 (3) pp. 577-592.DOI: https://doi.org/10.1108/JD-11-2018-0193.
Grants
2017-23 ERC Advanced Investigator Grant 741095 for “Patents as Scientific Information, 1895-2020,” (PASSIM). € 2.2 mil. www.passim.se
2010-13 HERA (Humanities in the European Research Area). €166,542 for the project “Science and Innovation as European Cultural Heritage: The Intellectual Properties of Marie Curie.” Swedish partner in CULTIVATE [Copyrighting Creativity: Creative Values, Cultural Heritage Institutions and Systems of Intellectual Property] total award 1 mil €.
2008-10 The Swedish Research Council. For a study on copyright and translation as part of the project “Språken, skolan, samhället/Languages, Education, and Swedish Society, 1960-2010” (VR 2008:5010/sek 756.272).
2008-10 European Commission Research Directorate-General. Program “Socio-Economic Sciences and Humanities”. Call identifier: FP7-SSH-2007-1. Proposal No 217514-COUNTER. Swedish partner and leader of Work Package 6 “Copyright and Collaborative Practices.” (€240.500).