I am a higher ed professional, writing teacher, sociologist, dad, and serial hobbyist. Depending on the week, I may also be deep into stationery, old books, web tinkering, fountain pens, games, shaving soaps, or some other interest that seemed reasonable when it started.
Since 2019, I have worked with graduate students and researchers on writing projects that matter to them: theses, dissertations, candidacy and dissertation exams, grants, articles, clinical and professional writing, and the ordinary mess of getting words onto the page.
I also teach workshops on academic integrity, generative AI, writing process, argument, structure, and clarity. Because I have been drafted into teaching about AI, people sometimes assume I am a tech guy. I am not, really. I can use the tools, and I think carefully about them, but I am pretty analogue by temperament: handwriting, paper planners, printed books, marginalia. I like Hemlock & Oak planners, with no affiliation beyond being fond of them.
My approach is practical, but not especially tidy. Writing is tangled up with identity, labour, time, supervision, funding, confidence, resentment, fear, attention, and the fact that most people are trying to do it under conditions they would not have chosen. My own uneven attention and working rhythms probably make me less patient with universal advice and more interested in systems, constraints, and workarounds.
I have a PhD in Sociology, earned through some combination of curiosity, persistence, and torment. I have published on nonreligion, secular identity, atheism, pseudoscience, and a few other odd corners of institutional life. That work still matters to me. It also helps more than it might seem. Sociology gave me a way to think about institutions, status, work, belief, belonging, and the stories people tell about what they are doing.
I am skeptical of academic mystique. Graduate school is not a sacred calling. It is training, labour, credentialing, politics, luck, and sometimes meaningful intellectual work. I care about graduate students because I do not want the process to make them feel worse about writing, thinking, or being a person.
Some of the people who have shaped how I think about academic writing include Rachel Cayley’s Explorations of Style, Pat Thomson’s patter, and Helen Sword. I also keep side projects, including liminal notes, my digital garden, and Crales’ Guide, an alternate-reality writing project.