Biography & Profile
About
PhD candidate researching generative AI, epistemic agency and education.
Biranchi Poudyal
PhD Candidate · Charles Darwin University · Sydney, Australia
Professional biography
I am a PhD candidate based in Sydney, Australia, researching how generative AI is reshaping the epistemological foundations of teaching and learning. My work brings together philosophy of education, cognitive science and AI policy to ask a practical question: as AI systems take on more of the cognitive work of studying, how do institutions preserve students' agency over their own knowledge and keep assessment meaningful?
Institution: Charles Darwin University, Australia · Program: Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) in Generative AI
Before commencing doctoral research, I built a research and writing career spanning international relations, journalism and digital content strategy — including a research fellowship at the Institute of South Asian Studies, Sichuan University, several years as a senior researcher and writer for a Nepal-based research centre, and a hands-on internship on a generative-AI model-training project. That combination of formal research training and applied AI industry experience now grounds my doctoral work.
Outside the doctoral project, I build practical research tools — policy-analysis pipelines, decision frameworks and a live AI-assisted thinking tool — that put my research principles into working software. See Projects.
PhD research
My doctoral research, "The Role of Generative AI and Agency in the Epistemological Foundations of Contemporary Pedagogy," examines how epistemic agency — a learner's capacity to form, justify and take responsibility for knowledge — is preserved, redistributed or eroded when cognitive work is shared with AI systems. It investigates the impact of generative AI on knowledge formation, learning processes and educational agency in contemporary pedagogy.
Institution: Charles Darwin University, Australia · Supervisor: Dr Jon Mason, Associate Professor in Education (e-Learning), Faculty of Arts & Society · Status: Ongoing
Research interests
- Generative AI in education
- Epistemic agency
- Human–AI co-agency
- Academic integrity
- Assessment policy
- Responsible AI
- AI governance in higher education
- Distributed cognition & cognitive offloading
Methodological experience
Systematic literature review, scoping review, qualitative coding, thematic analysis, discourse analysis, conceptual synthesis, and document and policy analysis. Each method is described in detail on the Research page.
Skills
Professional goals
I am seeking roles and collaborations in AI and education research, academic integrity, educational design, responsible AI, policy analysis, technical writing and research assistance — work where rigorous analysis of AI's effects on learning translates into policy and practice that institutions can actually use.
Values and research principles
Verification before publication
No claim, finding or AI-generated text is published without being checked by a human against its source.
Fictional cases, clearly labelled
Any illustrative student case is invented for research and teaching purposes and is labelled as such — never presented as real.
Proportionate, evidence-based judgement
Integrity and policy conclusions follow from documented evidence and reasoning, not from assumption or detector output.
Human accountability for AI-assisted work
Where AI assists my research or writing process, a human remains responsible for meaning, accuracy and final approval.
Qualifications, employment history, publications and awards shown on this site reflect verified CV details. Any field marked with square brackets is a placeholder awaiting information not yet confirmed — nothing on this site is fabricated.