I work with academic writing, AI, and graduate education.

Most of my work is in Canadian higher education. I teach workshops, run writing retreats, consult on theses and dissertations, help researchers with grants and articles, and, lately, spend more time than expected talking with people about AI.

I draw a lot from research on how people write under less than ideal conditions: when they hate writing, do not see themselves as writers, have too much else going on, or are trying to produce serious work inside institutions that make the work harder than it needs to be.

I have a PhD in Sociology and I am semi-famous in the tiniest of niches for publishing on nonreligion, secular identity, and a bunch of weird stuff. That may seem at odds with my work on writing and graduate education, but it is more complementary than it looks. Some of that comes from my own strange PhD experiences. Some of it comes from sociology itself, which, at least in its classic form, is a pretty good base for understanding higher education.

I am especially interested in demystifying graduate school. Many graduate students do not want to become professors by the end, and many are trying to finish without letting the process make them feel worse about writing, thinking, or themselves. I care about attrition, but not as an abstract institutional problem. I care because people should be able to understand the game, make choices with open eyes, and leave with more of themselves intact.