Kinga H. Skorupska

Assistant Professor of Computer Science
Polish-Japanese Academy of Information Technology

I am an HCI researcher working at the intersection of computer science and the social sciences. My work focuses on ICT for Social Good, with core expertise in human–AI interaction, participatory design, and inclusive and collaborative systems. I apply this work across domains including older-adult computing, education, cultural heritage, XR, and disinformation resilience. I study how people and communities interact with technology, especially AI and collaborative systems, and how those systems can be designed inclusively, participatorily, and responsibly. I currently contribute to the European projects Link4Skills and EUonAIR, lead PJAIT’s work in AI4Everyone, and co-organize a PhD summer school on Disinformation and Debunking.

Keywords:

human–AI interaction · co-design · crowdsourcing · accessibility · XR · disinformation · older-adult computing · cultural heritage · user research

Collaborations:

I’m especially interested in collaborations on durable, evidence-based technology, grounded in psychology and user research, and designed to remain useful beyond the next wave of tools. Particular areas include calm technology for cognitive health and well-being, participatory game design and learning through play, human–AI interaction in workplace contexts, and human factors in high-stakes settings.

Research Profile and Biography

I’m Kinga Skorupska, a researcher and Assistant Professor in the Computer Science Department at the Polish-Japanese Academy of Information Technology in Warsaw. I hold a PhD in Computer Science from the joint ICT and Psychology programme run by PJAIT and SWPS University. I work at the intersection of computer science and the social sciences, collaborating closely with the Social Informatics Lab at PJAIT. My research focuses on ICT for Social Good, with an emphasis on designing technology for genuine human needs. This includes designing better human–AI interactions, creating accessible and collaborative learning and play environments, and engaging communities in cultural heritage work through crowdsourcing and citizen science.

I hold an MA in English Philology from the University of Warsaw; my thesis examined the function of the 'other' and the 'monstrous' in extended realities: unfamiliar minds, scapegoating, and what societies do with entities that don't quite fit. After graduating I worked across audiovisual translation, localisation QA, web development, journalism, and adult education, often connecting these areas through technology. I subtitled feature films, documentaries, and cinematic trailers, and worked on QA for PC and console game localizations. In parallel I worked as a news editor and content writer for bilingual outlets including the Ellementy agency newsletter, Cogo-news and TheVarsovian, where I coordinated an editorial team of eight and acquired organizational habits that still shape my work.

During that same period I was heavily involved in the TED Translators community, serving as Polish Language Coordinator for the TED Open Translation Project and as a core member of the TEDxWarsaw team. As Polish Language Coordinator, I helped run a distributed, volunteer-powered quality-assurance pipeline: organising workshops and translatathons, writing guides for contributors, mentoring volunteers, and representing the Polish community at TED and TEDx conferences. I was driven by a conviction that knowledge should be accessible to everyone regardless of language, and I still feel the same.

A short 2014 interview with me by Richard Lucas is available here: https://richardlucas.com/blog/an-interview-with-kinga-skorupska-of-the-open-translation-project-and-more

In late 2016 I joined the Alien Project as a Researcher and Methodologist. It was an international educational initiative exploring migration through social design and art methods, run in collaboration with partner universities including Aalto University. As part of that work, I led the development of two books on social design and education, written with an international staff team: Understanding Migration Processes and Understanding People through Art and Design Practice. I also co-developed the concept for a thematic Community of Practice.

Around the same time I began collaborating with XR Lab at PJAIT, contributing to projects including VAPE, which explored VR as a tool for environmental awareness and was implemented in Myszków. In Myszków I also helped launch Winnica Rajska, a small Polish vineyard, working on branding, trademark preparation, and hands-on testing and production.

I was also involved in Interactive Online Interventions for the LGBT+ Community, a project supported by the Active Citizens Fund under the EEA/Norway Grants. The interventions were co-designed with the LGBT+ Community in partnership with the Kobo Association to provide accessible psychological support and education for LGBT+ individuals across Poland. Finally, I took part in the Alpha-XR simulated lunar mission at the Lunares Habitat, which focused on human factors in space exploration through communication and co-design in ICE (isolated, confined, extreme) environments. This work resulted in a publication comparing VR and Discord communication, a full paper at ISMAR, and a CHI Late-Breaking Work paper on a participatory approach to 3D printing in isolation. At the same time I collaborated with Ewa Makowska on her PhD on Digital Transformation Stress in the workplace, co-designing online interventions to help employees manage increasing workloads.

I defended my PhD with distinction in 2022 as part of the joint ICT and Psychology programme at PJAIT and SWPS University. It was focused on crowdsourcing systems designed with and for older adults. My thesis reframed older adults as high-value contributors whose language skills and life experience make them well suited to many crowdsourcing tasks, if systems are designed to meet them where they are. I tested this through a Smart TV app for checking TEDx subtitles using a remote, a chatbot for editing Wikipedia infoboxes, and web-based citizen science tasks inspired by Zooniverse. I distilled findings from these studies into AFFORCE, a framework for designing crowdsourcing experiences for older adults. I published this and related work at venues including CSCW, INTERACT and CHI.

I have built on that work through two major European projects, in collaboration with the Social Informatics Lab at PJAIT: the Horizon Europe Link4Skills project and the EUonAIR European Universities Alliance (Erasmus+), where I am part of the Centre of Excellence for Human–AI Interaction. Both of these projects focus on how people learn and work alongside AI systems. I currently lead the AI4Everyone project on the PJAIT side and organize a NAWA-funded International Summer School for PhD Candidates on Disinformation and Debunking. Beyond that, I also collaborate on minimalist technologies that encourage positive friction, recently publishing a CHI paper on the development and evaluation of a dedicated design system for e-paper mobile phones.

At PJAIT I teach Participatory Computer Games Design and occasionally broader HCI topics, coming to games research as a lifelong player and maker. I started in Multi-User Dungeons, where I joined as a Wizard coding items and quests in LPC, and went on to strategy games, online competitive games, pen-and-paper RPGs as a Game Master, board games together with some physical game design of my own. Years before I had any reason to run a VR study, I was playing the location-based AR game Ingress. I carry that designer-player double vision into my course, which includes learning through play via building physical prototypes of computer-game ideas and conducting game tests. I am currently studying the barriers and learning benefits involved in transposing computer-game ideas into physical prototypes. Most recently, I've also resumed work on a study comparing how people experience and collaborate on the Pandemic boardgame across three formats, as a physical tabletop game, on desktop over Zoom, and in VR on Tabletop Simulator.

I co-supervise doctoral candidates in the ICT & Design programme across research topics where my language-community work and current HCI research converge. This has already resulted in joint publications at EMNLP with Witold Sosnowski, my first PhD student. I also co-supervise a PhD candidate in collaboration with the Institute of Computer Science at Maria Curie-Skłodowska University in Lublin. I collaborate regularly with researchers across Poland, especially at the Information Processing Institute and its Interactive Technologies Lab, the Maritime University of Szczecin, and Wrocław University, and increasingly with partners across Europe within international projects and COST Actions (currently GRADE and GameTable) with a focus on preserving cultural heritage of both historical games and early digital culture. I am always looking for new partnerships that push my work in useful and unexpected directions.

Short bio

Kinga H. Skorupska is a researcher at the Polish-Japanese Academy of Information Technology working at the intersection of computer science and the social sciences. She holds a PhD in Computer Science from the joint ICT and Psychology programme run by PJAIT and SWPS University, and an MA in English Philology from the University of Warsaw. Her research focuses on ICT for Social Good, especially human–AI interaction, inclusive and participatory systems, and collaborative learning across AI, VR, game-based environments, and crowdsourcing. She is currently involved in the Horizon Europe Link4Skills and EUonAIR projects, is part of EUonAIR’s Centre of Excellence for Human–AI Interaction, leads PJAIT’s work in AI4Everyone, co-organizes an international PhD summer school on Disinformation and Debunking, and teaches Participatory Computer Games Design. Her work appears at venues including CSCW, INTERACT, and CHI.

Page updated

Google Sites

Report abuse

Kinga H. Skorupska

Assistant Professor of Computer SciencePolish-Japanese Academy of Information Technology

Research Profile and Biography

Short bio

Assistant Professor of Computer Science
Polish-Japanese Academy of Information Technology