Ryan SangBaek Kim, Ph.D.
Founder & Director, Ryan Research Institute
Affective Neuroscience · Cognitive Science & Philosophy · AI Ethics
Ryan Research Institute
Institute for Affective Sovereignty and Interdisciplinary Studies
The Ryan Research Institute (RRI) is an independent research organization based in Paris, dedicated to pioneering the emerging field of Affective Sovereignty Studies.
Our work integrates affective neuroscience, philosophy of mind, psychology, and AI ethics, while actively bridging into law, business studies, and the arts.
We investigate the deep structures of emotion, cognition, freedom, and human identity, with a mission to establish new frameworks for the ethical design of human-centered technologies and societies.
At the core of the Institute’s mission lies a conviction:
To understand the architecture of feeling
is to redraw the map of what it means to be human
This website serves as the official archive of our peer-reviewed publications, books, musical works, and essays — and as an evolving hub for interdisciplinary inquiry, global collaboration, and policy dialogue.
News & Highlights
📜 Affective Sovereignty in the Age of Emotional AI: Reclaiming the Right to Feel
Planned presentation at an international AI ethics conference, introducing the world’s first formal concept of “Affective Sovereignty” — the philosophical and ethical right for humans to interpret their own emotions. This declaration marks a landmark ethical stance and introduces “Uniqueness Violation” as a term for the infringement of emotional individuality.
🧩 Affective Suppression Fatigue: A Neurocognitive Framework for Emotional Numbing and Reactive Dysregulation
Submitted to a leading peer-reviewed psychology journal (name withheld).
This paper proposes a neurocognitive framework explaining how prolonged emotional suppression leads to emotional numbing and reactive dysregulation. It offers a four-stage threshold–collapse cycle model, moving beyond traditional burnout and ego-depletion theories.
📝 Emotion is Mine: Ethical Design Principles for Affective Sovereignty in Predictive AI
Currently under peer review, this paper expands the Affective Sovereignty framework into the realm of predictive AI, proposing concrete ethical design principles to safeguard emotional autonomy. It addresses how predictive systems may pre-empt human emotional interpretation, and offers actionable safeguards to preserve the individuality of emotional experiences.
Research Programs
When “I’m fine” doesn’t mean fine.
Most AI stops at labeling emotions as happy, sad, or angry. DMN goes deeper — decoding how people protect themselves when they speak, and why they truly feel what they feel.
It’s the first framework to pair defense mechanisms with core emotional motivations, revealing the hidden dialogue beneath the words.
Built from a quadri-lingual dataset (English, French, Georgian, Korean) and grounded in decades of psychology, DMN shows how AI can listen between the lines — with empathy, cultural humility, and precision.
🔍 Detects the hidden how and why behind language
🌏 Cross-cultural design from day one
💡 Proven to make AI more emotionally intelligent
Discover the Full DMN Project →
Books
📘 You Don’t Really Know Your Emotions
A neuroscience-based guide that reveals why your emotions are not what you think — and how to truly feel them.
📗 Feel First. Act Freely
How to trust your emotions again, stop overanalyzing, and restore your emotional rhythm through body and brain.
📙 Strategic Psychology for CEOs
A strategic psychology manual for CEOs integrating neuroscience and behavioral science.
Contact & Institutional Affiliations
Email (General Inquiries): ryan@ryanresearch.org
ORCID (Research Registry): https://orcid.org/0009-0006-2751-496X
Affiliated Academic Networks:
EurAI — European Association for Artificial Intelligence
BCS — The Chartered Institute for IT (SGAI)
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A multidisciplinary hub for research, ethics, and the arts in the age of AI
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