Research Biography

My research theorizes, implements, and empirically interrogates human–LLM systems and technical pipelines for sociocultural advancement and constructivist knowledge production. At the same time, it reconceptualizes relations between humans and cognitive machines by adapting activity theoretical and functionalist traditions. Central to this effort is orchestrated functional complementarity, a framework for configuring differentiated but interdependent subsystems—human and artificial—into more productive, adaptive, and rational systems of knowledge activity.

This perspective stands apart from both inflationary and deflationary accounts of intelligence, whether human or artificial. It concentrates on what transpires at the nexus of interaction, where constraints, differentiations, and orchestrations determine the productivity of the system. Within this configuration, the human remains the primary orchestrator, endowed with a species-specific capacity to define and pursue closure objects with conviction.

My trajectory has been shaped by three major epochs. In Toronto and Montreal, I investigated ancient Near Eastern languages and religions, with a focus on media transformations across orality, textuality, digitality. I then served for a decade as Director of Digital Publishing at a media conglomerate, before returning to academic research on digital learning and technology through cross-cultural, lab-based, and transnational mixed-methods investigations. A third epoch, centered in Kyiv between 2014 and 2022, deepened my engagement with digital technologies and culture during a period of radical political and technological change, consolidating activity theory as a systematic framework for analyzing knowledge production.

I have held technical, teaching, and research positions in departments of ancient civilizations, religion, educational informatics and political science at McGill University, Ontario Tech University, and the University of Guelph. I hold multiple graduate degrees and a PhD from Dublin Technological University, Ireland (2020). In 2025-26, I am a Dean’s Research Fellow at York University, Canada, a citizen of the Métis Nation of Ontario, and a resident of Ukraine.