Titaÿna Kauffmann-Will

I’m currently a PhD candidate at the Luxembourg Centre for Contemporary and Digital History (C²DH), supervised by Professor Valérie Schafer. The C²DH is an interdisciplinary centre focused on rethinking contemporary history through digital and critical methods. I’m part of the Deep Data Science of Digital History (D4H) Doctoral Training Unit, a PRIDE-funded program that brings together history, data science, and computer science to train researchers in digital analysis and interpretation.

My academic background spans history, political science, and digital humanities. I hold two Master’s degrees from the University of Lausanne, and have worked on research and archival projects at institutions including EPFL, the University of Zurich, and the Swiss Elite Observatory. These experiences have shaped my interest in understanding software, code, and other digital artifacts as both technical objects and historical sources.

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My thesis, Code as a Source, investigates how source code can serve as both a historical source and a form of digital heritage. It addresses questions of preservation, interpretation, and the epistemological status of code within historiography. Through case studies of significant programming projects, I explore how code reveals its cultural and political context—its embedded values, collaborative structures, and technical assumptions. Treating code as a textual and material artifact, my research reframes it as a site of historical meaning and challenges established boundaries of what historians consider archival evidence in the digital era.