Matti La Mela
  |
Matti La Mela is an Associate Professor in Digital Humanities at the Department of ALM and researcher at Uppsala Centre for Business History at Uppsala University. His background is in social science history and he has broad experience in multidisciplinary digital humanities research. His recent work has focused on patent and innovation history, property rights on nature (allemansrätten), and methods in digital history, particularly computational text analysis. In addition, Matti La Mela has contributed to the development of several large humanities and social sciences research resources such as the Swedish and Finnish historical patent databases and ParliamentSampo: Finnish Parliament on the Semantic Web.
In September 2025, Matti La Mela joins the Paris IAS for a ten-month research stay where he holds the Riksbankens Jubileumsfond Research Chair. This Swedish foundation supports research in the Humanities and Social Sciences.
Research topics
Patent and Innovation History; Computational Text Analysis; History of Natural Resources; Nordic Public Access Rights; Digital History.
Transnational innovation: a computational study on co-creation in France and Sweden during the Second Industrial Revolution
This project examines how new and significant technical knowledge emerged and spread between Sweden and France during the Second Industrial Revolution by analyzing digitized patent documents. It applies computational text analysis to study language change in patent documents, analysing how innovation was shaped through transnational exchange. The project investigates which technologies were patented across borders, how language indicated technological change, and which patent categories show the most novelty.
A key challenge in studying historical innovation is determining what technical knowledge was new and economically relevant. The project contributes to this debate by examining different forms of value in innovation, e.g. the economic value envisioned by inventors and the technological/societal value measured by later impact.
The project engages with recent digital humanities approaches applying methods to investigate lexical and semantic textual similarity. It applies several national patent databases, challenging the common focus on national contexts in patent history. The findings will contribute to discussions on how patents document technical knowledge, how innovation occurs collaboratively, and how computational methods can enhance historical research. The project provides new perspectives on the role of patents in shaping technological development and economic growth.
Kay publications
David E. Andersson, Matti La Mela, Fredrik Tell. "Family first: Defining, constructing, and applying historical patent families". Explorations in economic history, 94: 101627, 2024.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eeh.2024.101627
Kimmo Kettunen, Matti La Mela. "Semantic tagging and the Nordic tradition of Everyman’s rights". Digital Scholarship in the Humanities, 37(2), 483–496, 2022.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/llc/fqab052
David E. Andersson, Matti La Mela M. "Nordic Networks: Patent agents and the business of technology intermediation in Sweden and Finland, 1860-1910". Scandinavian Economic History Review, 68(1), 45–65, 2020.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/03585522.2019.1667425
|
|
|
|
|
|