Angjelin Hila

Sociotechnical Systems and Human Agency

PhD Candidate in Information Science • Sociotechnical Systems • Human-AI Interaction • Computational Social Science

Website: angjelinhila.com
Email: ahila@utexas.edu
GitHub: angjelinhila
Medium: angjelinhila

About Me

I am a doctoral researcher working at the intersection of information science, computational social science, and human-AI interaction. My research explores how socio-technical systems, emerging forms of human-AI hybrid intelligences, and algorithmic mediation produce new material ontologies that reconstitute human agency and reconfigure social action. I also develop tools for qualitative classification and large-scale discourse analysis.

I’m currently working on a set of projects that center on human agency and technology. The first dimension of this research consits of a theoretical reconceptualization of agents and the meanning of agency and situating this reconceptualization within an empirical human-comptuer interaction (HCI) context

The second dimension consists of theorizing and situating online social action within a broader theory of social action as well as individual agency. Online agency gets filtered through a continually complexifying information ecosystem where the cooperative impetus gets coopted by competing actors such as online media, search, and a broad array of cumputing services vie for information dominance.

I approach the second dimension through a hybrid of computational and manual coding methodologies on data sources that include Reddit, and other sites of online discourse that provide evidence for changing relations of sociality and foreground emerging forms of agency in light of increasing AI dominance.

📚 Research Interests

Philosophy of Information, Technology, and Infrastructure
Computational Social Science and Social Ontology
Human-AI Interaction (HAX) and Human Agency
Intentionality and Collective Inteligence
Qualitative Coding and AI Interventions
Deleuze & Guattari, Affect Theory, Non-representational Methods

📝 Selected Peer-Reviewed Publications

Hila, A. (2025). The epistemological consequences of large language models: Rethinking collective intelligence and institutional knowledge. AI & Society. DOI
Hila, A. (2025). An enactivist approach to HCI: Bridging the gap between agent autonomy and affordances. In HCI International 2025 Proceedings (S041: Data-Driven Design for Trust, Transparency, and Collaboration). DOI.
Hila, A. & Hauser, E. (2025). Assessing the reliability of large language models for deductive qualitative coding: A comparative study of ChatGPT interventions. In ASIS&T 2025 Annual Meeting. DOI
Hila, A. (2025). Psycho-social assemblages: Virtuality, multiplicity & intensity in the evolving public library sphere. Deleuze Studies. DOI

📚 Other Publications

Hila, Angjelin. “An Introduction to Reinforcement Learning.” Medium, 2024. Article
Hila, Angjelin. “Quantum Computing for Complete Beginners.” Medium, 2023. Article
Hila, Angjelin. “Cooperative and Competitive Games: The Limits of Game Theory and Evolutionary Biology in Modeling Social Systems.” Medium, 2021. Article
Hila, Angjelin. “Analog Photography in a Digital World: The Phenomenology and Contemporary Status of the Single Lens Reflex Camera.” The IJournal: Student Journal of the Faculty of Information, vol. 2, no. 1, Fall 2016, Toronto, Canada, 7 Dec. 2016.

📄 Curriculum Vitae

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🛠️ Projects and Tools

Reddit Data Modeling & Belief Causal Inference: Modeling semantic, temporal, and hierarchical structures in Reddit discourse to study belief evolution, causal inference, and democratic processes.
Social Network Modeling: Using tools like NetworkX, PyVis, and GNNs to construct graph-based models (user-user, topic-document, semantic, and hierarchical) that support analysis, prediction, and inference across large-scale social datasets.
Hybrid-Agentic Models: Building AI-human hybrid workflows for scaling qualitative coding, classification, and interpretive tasks using large language models and embedded rule-based intervention protocols.
Neurophenomenology and HCI Sense of Agency: Developing neurophenomenological methodology to measure the sense of agency (SoA) in human-computer interaction contexts, including EEG-informed VR experiments (e.g., HAX).