Profile 03 · Academic & Research

Epistemic
friction
as a method

I study how people maintain — or lose — their sense of intellectual authorship when AI systems mediate the act of thinking. My research sits at the intersection of post-phenomenology, science and technology studies, and academic literacies.

Contact for supervision enquiries
Research in brief
"How do university students maintain epistemic identity and agency when AI tools increasingly mediate their intellectual processes?"
Institution
Charles University, Prague — prospective PhD
Method
Qualitative longitudinal IPA — 15 students, 3 interview waves, 18 months
Original concept
Phenomenological friction — the productive resistance that marks genuine intellectual agency
Status
Proposal submission-ready · Supervisor prospecting in progress
01

The research
question

Central inquiry
How do students construct, maintain, and negotiate epistemic identity and agency when AI tools mediate their intellectual and academic work?
This question sits at a moment of genuine rupture. AI writing and reasoning tools have entered academic life faster than any institutional or conceptual framework can accommodate. The research doesn't ask whether students use AI — they do. It asks what happens to the felt sense of authorship, the experience of thinking, when the process is increasingly co-produced by a system that has no stake in the outcome.
Epistemic identity Agency AI-mediation Academic literacies Higher education
Original contribution
Phenomenological friction
The concept that meaningful intellectual work involves productive resistance — a felt sense of difficulty that marks genuine engagement. The research investigates what happens when AI smooths that friction away, and whether its removal constitutes a loss, a shift, or a transformation of epistemic practice.
Why now
A gap in the literature
Existing work on AI in education focuses predominantly on outcomes, ethics, or policy. There is almost no phenomenologically-grounded research on the lived, first-person experience of AI-mediated intellectual work — particularly longitudinal work that traces identity shifts over time.
02

Theoretical
framework

Tradition Key thinkers Contribution to this research
Post-phenomenology Ihde, Rosenberger Human-technology relations; how tools reshape perception and experience
Science & Technology Studies Suchman, Latour Sociotechnical assemblages; agency distributed across human and non-human actors
Academic Literacies Lea & Street, Ivanič Identity in disciplinary writing; literacy as social and identity practice
Interpretive Phenomenology Smith, Flowers, Larkin IPA as method; idiographic approach to lived experience

"The framework is deliberately interdisciplinary — no single tradition can hold the complexity of what happens when a student sits down to write with, through, or against an AI system."

03

Study
design

15
Participants
University students across disciplines — purposively sampled for variation in AI use, field of study, and relationship to writing as an intellectual practice.
3
Interview waves
Semi-structured interviews at three points over 18 months. Reflective journals between waves. Work-based comparative reflection tasks at each stage.
IPA
Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis
Idiographic, longitudinal. Attends to individual sense-making before moving to cross-case themes. Suited to tracking identity shifts over time.
04

Academic
background

2026 — prospective
PhD — [Faculty TBC]
Charles University, Prague
Research on epistemic identity and agency in AI-mediated academic environments. Longitudinal qualitative study. Supervisor prospecting in progress.
Proposal ready
2022 — 2024
MA — Society, Communication and Media
Charles University, Prague
Graduate study at the intersection of media theory, communication, and social inquiry. Dissertation: [topic to be added].
Completed
Earlier
BA — Communication Studies
Ghana Institute of Journalism, Accra
Foundation in communication theory, journalism, and media practice. Formative intellectual grounding for subsequent graduate work.
Completed
05

Research
interests

Core areas
Epistemic identity in higher education
Human-AI interaction and mediation
Post-phenomenology of technology
Academic literacies and writing identity
Agency in sociotechnical systems
Adjacent interests
Science and technology studies (STS)
AI ethics and governance
Media theory and communication
EdTech and institutional change
Philosophy of mind and cognition

Interested in supervising or collaborating?

I am actively seeking a PhD supervisor at Charles University whose work intersects with post-phenomenology, STS, or academic literacies. I welcome conversations with researchers working in adjacent areas.

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