Christoffer Koch Andersen
Cambridge Trust International Scholar
Codes of Life, Codes of Death: Tracing the (Im)possibility of Trans Lives in Algorithmic Assemblages
Supervisor:
Dr Lauren Wilcox (University of Cambridge Centre for Gender Studies)
Advisor:
Dr Caroline Bassett (University of Cambridge Digital Humanities)
Abstract
Algorithmic systems are presented as the ‘God-like hack’ to revolutionise our lives and transcend humanity, but what if, rather than improving and making our lives easier, algorithms infuse a deathly and intimate violence of binary valorisation that render certain lives unintelligible and unliveable, forcing some bodies into an algorithmically impossible form of life?
My thesis ‘Codes of Life, Codes of Death: Tracing the (Im)possibility of Trans Lives in Algorithmic Assemblages’ offers a new framework for conceptualising transness and algorithms by investigating the co-constitution of the trans/algorithmic and their shifting sociopolitical conditions, contestations and production of the ‘human’ that historically enabled transness to exist in particular ways: together, tracing the algorithmic necropolitical valorisation of life, coded deaths and the (im)possibility of trans lives. My research traces the mutations of the human through the (dis)continuities, modalities and configurations of trans as a human category and algorithms as categorisation of humanness. How do algorithms continue and enact forms of deathworlds wherein some bodies are coded to die and others are encouraged to live? What does it mean to be(come) trans through the algorithmic lens? How are trans subjects folded into and out of code, loaded into death and out of life?
Through a critical genealogy that traces the colonial classificatory violence of binarity, its implementation into bureaucratic administrative violence of nation states and its automation in contemporary algorithmic violence, this thesis challenges the algorithmic relation to transness, the presumed technooptimist ‘objectivity’ of algorithms and the ways in which the algorithmic organises the necropolitical infrastructures of targeting, surveillance, and cisnormative violence that trans bodies live under. This intervention posits that algorithms—as the computational set of instructions—constitute the channels through which the trans body is classified and translated as information, coded as data, marked-as-different and imbued with necropolitical violence that cannot valorise transness, which position transness against and in tension with the binary valorisation of life itself.
Essentially, this thesis reframes how algorithms enact a ‘hegemonic code’ of binarity that marks transness as unliveable and as an ontological impossibility. I seek to unravel how the productive power of algorithmic systems not only code the distinction between who should live and who should die, but embed algorithmic code as the new omnipresent replicator code that inscribes a fixed notion of who can and cannot count as human. Ultimately, my aim is to show how the algorithmic impossibility of life manifests through transness as a means of expanding our understandings of the relationship between politics, technology, and gender in a coded world.
Academic Background:
Master of Philosophy (Distinction & Best Dissertation Award) in Education (Knowledge, Power and Politics), Faculty of Education, Christ’s College, University of Cambridge
Bachelor of Science (Distinction) in Education Science, Aarhus University
Research Interests:
Critical Algorithm Studies, Artificial Intelligence, Feminist STS, Trans and Queer Theory, Feminist Theory, Trans Liveability, Algorithmic Violence and Justice, Necropolitics, Posthumanism, International Relations, Policing and Surveillance Studies, Classification and Categorisation, Postcolonial and Decolonial Thought, Security, Gendered and Racialised Assemblages, History of Gender and Technology
Publications:
Andersen, C. K. (In prep). Deceptive Bodies, Detective Algorithms: Coded Warfare on Trans Bodies.
Andersen, C. K. (In prep, 2025).Trans Countersurveillance. Special Issue: ‘En/Countering Tracking. Resisting spatiotemporal media operations in computational culture’. Journal of Computational Culture.
Andersen, C. K. (Forthcoming, 2024). Wrapped Up in the Cis-Tem: Trans Liveability in the Age of Algorithmic Violence. Special Issue: Ruptures, Resistance, Reclamation: Global Feminisms in Digital Age. Atlantis: Critical Studies in Gender, Culture & Social Justice. Preprint: https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/tracm
Andersen, C. K. (Under peer-review, 2024). Digitalising trans resistance: The power of digital trans archives in global anti-trans times. Feminist Media Studies.
Andersen, C. K. (Under peer-review, 2024). Data Deathworlds: Trans Tales of Data Haunting and Data Non-Lives in the Digitalised Danish Welfare State. STS Encounters.
Andersen, C. K. (In prep, 2024).Lost in Translation and Living Between the Coded Lines: Binary Code and the Incommensurability of Transness. Special Issue: Code as Conversation. AI & Society.
Andersen, C. K. (2024). Encoding Trans Archival Memory: Reflections on Archiving Digital Trans Resistance. Issue 9, Spring 2024: The Archive is Political. Rejoinder Journal. Rutgers University.
Public Scholarship/Conference Presentations:
Andersen, C. K. (2025). Deathly Algorithms: Unveiling the Colonial and Cisnormative Legacies of Algorithmic Operations. Discussion on Algorithmic Governance, Discrimination & Democracy. The Cambridge Union, University of Cambridge, United Kingdom.
Andersen, C. K. (2024, December 5). Unliveable Lives: On the Algorithmic Violation of Trans Liveability.Pembroke Paper Talks, Pembroke College, University of Cambridge.
Andersen, C. K & McInerney, K. (2024, November 13). Gender & AI Panel Talk. University of Cambridge AI Ethics Society. University of Cambridge, United Kingdom.
Andersen, C. K. (2024, November 8). AI, (Un)democratic Politics & Coded Violence – What do we do about ‘AI’? [Invited Research Talk]. Centre for Digital Pedagogy. Aarhus, Denmark.
Andersen, C. K. (2024, September 6). Algorithmic Violence and Methods of Queer Reparation. [Invited Discussion]. SAPEA Webinar on Ethical AI in Science, European Commission.
The Danish Society of Engineers (IDA). (2024, August 14). Queers in the Machine: Symposium on Queerness and AI: Censorship, Content Moderation and Algorithmic Violence. [Invited Panel]. Copenhagen, Denmark.
Andersen, C. K. (2024, June 19). A Trans History of Denmark: From Administrative Violence to Automated Erasure. Queer and Trans History Now Postgraduate Symposium 2024. June 18-19. Mansfield College, University of Oxford. Honourable best presentation mention (Top 5%).
Andersen, C. K. (2024, June 7). Data Deathworlds and Digital Trans Liveability: The Data Haunting and Data (Non)Lives of Trans Subjects in the Digitalised Danish Welfare State. Danish Association for Science and Technology Studies (DASTS) Conference 2024, 6-7 June, DTU, Copenhagen.
Andersen, C. K. (2024, June 1). Lost in Translation and Living Between the Coded Lines: Binary Code and the Incommensurability of Transness. Code as Conversation: Transmedia Dialogues Around Critical Code Studies, 1 June 2024. Cambridge Digital Humanities, University of Cambridge.
Andersen, C. K. (2024, May 21). AI and Education Panel w. Dr. Bentley and Prof. Pettifer. [Panel Moderator]. Access Academia & Social Justice Research Fellowship.
Danish Queerness & AI Group. (2024, May 15). How Does Queerness Clash With AI? [Invited Panel Talk]. Kulturhuset Islandsbrygge. Copenhagen, Denmark.
Cambridge Queer Studies Conference 2024. (2024, May 12). Disruptive Queer Digitalities. [Conference Panel Moderator]. Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge, University of Cambridge, United Kingdom. University of Cambridge, United Kingdom.
Newnham College JCR. (2024, May 6).AI & Transness. [Invited Talk]. Newnham College, University of Cambridge.
Andersen, C. K. (2024, April 16). Når teknologi er transfobisk: MobilePays nye retningslinjer diskriminerer transpersoner [When Technology is Transphobic: MobilePay’s New Guidelines Discriminate Trans People]. Politiken, Denmark.
University of Cambridge Gender Studies Society. (2024). Algorithmic Violence Research Podcast Talks. Episode 1. Algorithmic Violence: a Discussion with Christoffer Koch Andersen. University of Cambridge, United Kingdom.
Andersen, C. K. (2023, October 17). Trans Activism: Resistance & the Quest for a Trans Counterpublics. [Guest Lecture]. Module on ‘Feminist Debates and Activism’. Angelia Ruskin University, Cambridge, United Kingdom.
Andersen, C. K. (2023, June 2). 'Counteracting Anti-Trans Narratives and Algorithmic Violence: The Power of Envisaging a Digital Transgender Epistemology'. [Conference Presentation]. 20th Annual Kaleidoscope Conference 2023. Faculty of Education. University of Cambridge, United Kingdom.
Andersen, C. K. (2023, May 13). 'Transgressing the Algorithmic Cis-tem: Towards a Digital Transgender Epistemology'. [Conference Poster]. Cambridge Queer Studies Conference. Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge.
Andersen, C. K. (2023, Feb 21). 'Countering Transgender Violence in a Digital Age: Resisting Anti-Trans Narratives by Working with Digital Transfeminism & Epistemologies'. [Research Presentation]. Christ's College Feminist Society x Emmanuel College Feminist Society. Emmanuel College, University of Cambridge, United Kingdom.
Other Honours and Awards:
Cambridge Trust International Scholar, Cambridge Trust (PhD Scholarship)
University of Cambridge, Faculty of Education, Best Dissertation Award
Aage & Johanne Louis-Hansens Fonden, Postgraduate Study Scholarship
Augustinus Fonden, Postgraduate Study Scholarship
Knud Højgaards Fond, Postgraduate Study Scholarship
Nordea Fonden, Postgraduate Study Scholarship
The Danish Ministry of Higher Education and Science, International Scholarship
William Demant-Fonden, Postgraduate Study Scholarship