Research Interests
Knowledge Media Design, Intelligent Knowledge Interface, Play-based Learning, Agentic AI, Community-based Inquiry, Curatorial Practices, Social Innovation, Artivism, Research-Creation.
Kathy H. Zhou is an artist, curator, and learning scientist whose research program, Knowledge Media Arts (KMA), investigates how communities come to know together — and what happens to collective knowing when intelligent machines enter the room. Working through research-creation, arts-based inquiry, and design-based co-design partnerships, she builds and studies environments such as games, exhibitions, and AI-supported learning interfaces where knowledge is produced, contested, and transmitted in public.
Her work is grounded in a question of collective epistemology: how do groups (in classrooms, galleries, libraries) negotiate what counts as knowing, whose knowledge counts, and, increasingly, what a machine can be said to understand? She pursues this question in dialogue with the learning sciences and cognitive science, drawing on situated cognition, collaborative knowledge building, and emerging work on metacognition in the age of AI.
Her multiple-award-winning project, the Fall of Artica Game, embodies this program: a collective learning game in which up to thirty students negotiate resource allocation in a value-pluralistic society, supported by AI conversational agents designed to catalyze collective inquiry. The work received the Outstanding Tech Innovation Award at CSCL 2023 (International Society of the Learning Sciences), and grew out of her earlier practice in Youth Participatory Action Research, artivism, and speculative world-building with youth investigating systemic inequities.
As an artist-curator, Zhou treats exhibitions as research sites for public epistemology. In 2026, she co-curated the first Knowledge Media Arts Exhibition at Dupont Rails Gallery, Toronto; the second edition, themed STEAM for Social Good, co-hosted with the NewOne Program at New College, University of Toronto, follows in 2027. Her current work extends these questions toward embodied AI and social robotics in learning communities, asking how publics judge what an intelligent machine understands, and how art can hold that judgment open for collective inquiry.
Zhou contributes to cross-disciplinary research networks at the intersection of art, education, and technology as a member of:
Publications
Zhou, K. H., Pullen, C., & Slotta, J. D. (2025) Public Sphere in Dystopia: a Game-based Youth Participatory Action Research, College of Art Association, 113th Annual Conference, New York City
Zhou, K. H., Pullen, C., Holmes, J., & Slotta, J. D. (2023). FoA Game for Change: A Role for Open AI Conversational Agents. Presentation at 19th European Conference on Technology Enhanced Learning, EC-TEL 2024, Krems, Austria, September 16–20.
Zhou, K. H., Fong, C., Pullen, C., & Slotta, J. D. (2024) From Youth Participatory Art to Vision and Action: A Framework for Game-based Research-Creation, short paper at the 18th International Conference of the Learning Sciences-ICLS 2024, International Society of the Learning Sciences.
Zhou, K. H., Pullen, C., & Slotta, J. D. (2024) Digging the Abandoned Feelings Out of the Wasteland: Raising Trouble Makers through A Dystopian Critical Action Game, a poster at the 18th International Conference of the Learning Sciences-ISLS 2024, International Society of the Learning Sciences.
Zhou, K. H., Pullen, C., & Slotta, J. D. (2024) A Critical Action Game: Fall of Artica Investigating new forms of collective inquiry for critical action, Roundtable Session titled “Engaging Our Students & Ourselves: Teaching in New Dimensions and Contexts”, Division C - Learning and Instruction/Division C - Section 1b: Humanities, Social Sciences, Fine Arts at the 2024 Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association (AERA).
Zhou, K. H., Pullen, C., Holmes, J., & Slotta, J. D. (2023). Supporting Collective Inquiry in a Critical Action Game: A Role for Open AI Conversational Agents. In Proceedings of the 16th International Conference on Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning-CSCL 2023, pp. 428-431. International Society of the Learning Sciences.
Zhou, K. H., & Slotta, J. D. (2023). A Dystopian Game for Change: Building Asynchronous Learning Network Through Co-Design Partnerships Across Disciplines. In Proceedings of the 17th International Conference of the Learning Sciences-ICLS 2023, pp. 2169-2170. International Society of the Learning Sciences.
Zhou, K.H. (2022). FALL OF ARTICA: A DYSTOPIAN GAME FOR CHANGE(Master Thesis, University of Toronto).
Raman, P., Carvalho, R., Ghasempour, E., Zhou, K.H, Slotta, J. (2021). Supporting Students’ Critical Action within a Cultural Context: A Role for Arts-based Pedagogy in a Community of Learners. Proceedings of the 16th International Conference of the Learning Sciences-ICLS 2022. International Society of the Learning Sciences.