Matti Leprêtre | Doktorand Stipendiat
Former Member
Home Institution
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EHESS
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Position
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EHESS Doctoral Fellowship
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Disciplines
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History
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Biography
Matti Leprêtre is a Ph. D. candidate at the EHESS, a former DAAD fellow and currently a Teaching and Research Fellow at Sciences Po Paris. As an undergraduate he trained in postcolonial studies and earned a dual degree from Sciences Po Paris and Columbia University in the City of New York in 2017. He then joined the EHESS where he pursued a first MA in medieval history and a second in medical anthropology. His theses focused respectively on the use of medicinal plants in the writings of Paracelsus and among French herbalists today. His PhD dissertation traces the transformations undergone by herbal remedies in Germany between 1884 and 1945, centrally considering the crossed influence of colonization, proto-environmentalist movements, Nazism and the industrialization of drugs production on the process.
Researchtopic
Situated at the intersection of the social history of science, transimperial history, and environmental history, this thesis examines the consequences of the industrialization of drug production on the ways medicinal plants are used. Drawing from the under-studied archives of the pharmaceutical industry and other scientific institutions, this research highlights that plants were an essential component of the drugs mass-produced by pharmaceutical companies starting in the 1880s. Building on recent developments in trans-imperial history, it intersects the trajectory of the German Empire with those of the British and French empires to prove that plants, far from being confined to the anachronistic sphere of 'alternative medicines', remained strategic resources in the 20th century, leading to major rivalries among Western empires to control their supply on a global scale. In 1944, the Allies immediately appropriated the stocks of medicinal plants requisitioned by the Germans from French peasants. Supporting its argument, this thesis employs digital history, particularly mapping, to trace the evolution of the international trade in plants, while offering an analysis of the environments in Germany that enabled their cultivation, in an interdisciplinary approach combining the contributions of history, geography, and environmental sciences.
Title of thesis
How Medicinal Plants Became a Natural Remedy. A transimperial perspective (German, English and French empires, 1884-1945)Institution of thesis
Supervisor
Publications
Edited Special issues
“Santé et nature”, Special issue of Histoire, médecine et santé n°26, with Léo Bernard and Céline Pessis (2026).
Peer-reviewed academic journals
“Paracelsus, his Herbarius, and the relevance of medicinal herbs in his medical thought”. Daphnis. Zeitschrift für Deutsche Literatur und Kultur der Frühe Neuzeit 49-3 (2021): 324–378.
Two articles under review for the Journal of the History of Ideas and Revue d’Anthropologie des Connaissances.
Reviewer for the Intellectual History Review.
Book chapters
“The specific properties of medicinal herbs in Paracelsus’ works”, in Paracelsus and the Forgotten Reformation (Brill, ed. Urs Leo Gantenbein, Didier Kahn, Andrew Weeks) (Forthcoming)
Book reviews
« Mohamed Amer Meziane, Au bord des mondes. Vers une anthropologie métaphysique », Revue d’anthropologie des connaissances, 17-3 (2023).