Faculty of Science, Technology and Medicine
Faculty of Law, Economics and Finance
Faculty of Humanities, Education and Social Sciences
Interdisciplinary Centre for Security, Reliability and Trust
Luxembourg Centre for Systems Biomedicine
Luxembourg Centre for Contemporary and Digital History
Luxembourg Centre for European Law
Luxembourg Centre for Socio-Environmental SystemsDigital archaeology of shell companies: infrastructures of global connections and local networks (DIGSHELL)
The project at a glance
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Start date:01 May 2026
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Duration in months:60
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Funding:European Research Council (ERC)
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Principal Investigator(s):Benoît MAJERUS
About
DIGSHELL starts from the premise that today’s debate on tax engineering and global tax chains lacks historical context. It is often approached as a modern phenomenon tied to the ideological victory of neoliberalism, late 20th-century globalization, and increasing financialization. The project proposes an innovative and efficient approach to the study of global tax chains by providing historical depth based on three hypotheses. First, the phenomenon dates back further than previously thought, with tax avoidance infrastructures established since the interwar period still shaping these chains today. Second, shell companies, which may appear as “boring things”, invisible and insubstantial, are central elements in this story. Understanding the local communities that create the legislative codes establishing them, analyzing the professions that maintain these codes and companies, and examining the global links woven through these shell companies will provide new insights into the history of 20th-century capitalism. Third, to make company registers readable despite their volume, it is necessary to employ distant (i.e. digital) reading. In DIGSHELL, digital history will not merely be a method: given the recent democratization of Large Language Models (LLM), the project will take place in a period of intense hermeneutic experimentation and reflection, in which the project intends to participate.
Organisation and Partners
- Contemporary European History
- Luxembourg Centre for Contemporary and Digital History (C2DH)
Project team
- Benoît MAJERUS, PI
- Matteo CALABRESE, Project member
- Maria BIRYUKOV, Project member
- Victoria MOUTON, Project member
- Stefanie HEUER, Project member
- Roxana Perez, Project member, ENS Lyon (external)
