Kyrill Potapov

Bridging Responsible AI Divides Research Fellow at University College London Interaction Centre

Background

I am a Human-Computer Interaction researcher and philosopher interested in how technology mediates social practice. I am interested in how people reflect on data about aspects of their own lives and experiences, as it is captured in visualisations, physicalizations and sonifications. I take a qualitative approach to understanding experiences with technology in diverse contexts from chronic pain to teen emotion regulation. My current fellowship explores how neighbours can work together to share locally generated solar energy. My theoretical work reads Vygotsky and Ilyenkov through the lens of enactive cognitive science and the Pittsburgh school of neo-pragmatist philosophy.

Some publications

• Potapov, K. (2025). Emotions and Vygotsky’s materialist semiotics: reply to Oittinen/Las emociones y la semiótica materialista de Vygotski: respuesta a Oittinen. Culture and Education, 37(1), 3-17.
• Potapov, K., Gold, N., Olugbade, T., de C Williams, A. C., Overbeck, C. D., Lynch, D., … & Berthouze, N. (2025, April). Movement Sonification of Familiar Music to Support the Agency of People with Chronic Pain. In Proceedings of the 2025 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 1-13).
• Di Paolo, E. A., & Potapov, K. (2024). Evald Ilyenkov and the enactive approach. Studies in East European Thought, 76(3), 439-463.
• Potapov, K. (2021). A Marxist Psychology of Language and Representation.Cosmonaut Magazine https://cosmonautmag.com/2021/11/a-marxist-psychology-of-language-and-representation/