Background
Marius Buning (Ph.D. European University Institute, 2013) is Professor of European History at the University of Oslo. He joined UiO in 2022 through an appointment by invitation (kallelse). He is currently Principal Investigator of the ERC project Before Copyright: Printing privileges and the politics of knowledge in early modern Europe. He has held fellowships and visiting appointments at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris, Harvard University, the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Studies, the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, and the Dahlem Humanities Center of Freie Universität Berlin.
Academic interests
My research interests focus on the origins of intellectual property, the relationship between theory and practice in the early modern era, and the role of the state in shaping notions of scientific and technological progress.
Research Supervision
I welcome enquiries from prospective students interested in exploring various areas of European history, from the early modern period to the present. While my expertise lies in the history of knowledge and legal history, I have broad interests in the different facets of religious, social, and cultural history, as well as in the history of political thought.
Tags:
History,
Early modern history,
Contemporary History,
History of Technology,
Legal History,
Book History,
International History,
History of Science
Publications
Selected Publications
A full list of publications is available through Zenodo and ORCID. My ORCID iD is 0000-0003-1108-840X.
Monographs
Knowledge, Patents, Power: The Making of a Patent System in the Dutch Republic. Leiden: Brill, 2021.
Edited volumes and special issues
Privilege and Power: Printing Privileges and the Regulation of Knowledge in Early Modern Europe, co-edited with Alberto Campilo Pardo and Andrea Ottone. Oslo: Scandinavian University Press (in press, 2026).
Musicians and Copyright: A History of Collective Rights Management in the Music Industry, co-edited with Veronique Pouillard and Mala Loth. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2026.
Printing Privileges in the Early Modern Low Countries, co-edited with Marlise Rijks (a special issue of Early Modern Low Countries, 8, no.2 (2024)).
Ownership of Knowledge. Beyond Intellectual Property, co-edited with Dagmar Schäfer and Annapurna Mamidipudi. Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 2023.
Technologies of the Law/Law as a Technology, co-edited with Mario Biagioli (a special issue of History of Science, 57, no.1 (2019)).
Selected articles and chapters
‘Controlling the Flow of Information. The Soft Power Dimensions of Printing Privileges in the Seventeenth-Century Dutch Republic’, EMLC, 8, no.2 (2024): 250-275.
‘Teaching Intellectual Property: Constructing the Historical Narrative of Intellectual Property in University Textbooks’, in Ownership of Knowledge. Beyond Intellectual Property, eds. Dagmar Schäfer, Annapurna Mamadipudi, and Marius Buning (Cambridge MA: The MIT Press, 2023), 91-120.
‘The Art of Demonstration by Simon Stevin: Linguistic and Mathematical Innovation’, in Rethinking Stevin, Stevin Rethinking: Constructions of a Dutch Polymath, eds. Rienk Vermij, Fokko Jan Dijksterhuis, and Karel Davids (Leiden: Brill, 2020), 123-154.
‘Stench and the City. Urban Sensescapes and Technological Innovation in the Early Modern Period’, in Knowledge and the Early Modern City: A History of Entanglements, eds. Bert de Munck and Antonella Romano (London: Routledge, 2019), 101-25.
‘Making Things New: Invention Privileges and the Configuration of Priority’, History of Science 58 (2019): 81-96.
‘Privileging the Common Good. The Moral Economy of Printing Privileges in the Seventeenth-Century Dutch Republic’, in Buying and Selling: The Business of Books in Early Modern Europe, ed. Shanti Grahelli (Leiden: Brill, 2019), 88-108.
‘Inventing Scientific Method: The Privilege System as a Model for Scientific Knowledge-Production’, Intellectual History Review 24, no. 1 (2014): 59-70.
Ongoing academic service
2025 – present Governing board member, ‘The International Society for the History and Theory of Intellectual property’ (ISHTIP).
2024 – present Managing board member, ‘Primary Sources on Copyright (1450-1900)’
2024 – present Series editor, ‘Knowledge Infrastructure and Knowledge Economy’, Brill Publishers.
2022 – present Co-chair of the History of Capitalism Research Group, IAKH, University of Oslo.
2018 – present Editorial board member, ‘Knowledge Praxis in Early Modern Societies. Sources and Interpretations’, Edizioni Ca’ Foscari/ Open Access Editions.
Published
Aug. 3, 2021 1:13 PM
- Last modified
May 3, 2026 10:56 PM
