Services
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If you are looking for a keynote speaker on innovation and disruption in academic publishing, please get in touch. I’ll be happy to hear from you because your very contact will tell me that you wish to place the voices, needs, and experiences of researchers at the heart of research dissemination. Researchers have become modern slaves in neoliberal academia, and too many convenient blinkers are in place protecting the status quo and those who benefit from it at the expense of people who endure harms, injustices, and atrocities the sector is yet to be answerable to. After taking the time to listen to discomforting things, you can become part of the change for good. My other area of expertise is cultural competency in the social services sector, so if you are looking to help make your workforce in social work and other cognate areas more aware of racism and sexism and how to use this knowledge compassionately and ethically to improve the wellbeing of clients from migrant communities, your contact is also welcome.
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I know you will be exhausted from years of hard work but also excited for what lies ahead, and will give you care and encouragement in the final stages of your dissertation journey. I bring 20+ years of experience in higher education, so will copyedit and proofread your thesis to give it the final polish and refinement that reflects the pride you take in your work, and also mentoring in research and writing. As a previous research supervisor and marker I can flag comments that markers may make, giving you and your team the chance to address these prior to submission and reduce the chances of attracting ‘major revisions required’; supervisors have always appreciated the final set of informed eyes I bring. Your thesis may be an Honours, Masters, or PhD, and you will receive respect as a knowledge holder and creator. Each thesis I read gives me great pleasure as I learn from the upcoming generations how talented the pool of researchers is, and what the latest knowledge advancements are. I specialise in the social sciences and am most proficient in APA referencing, but we can discuss these things further if you wish. When you email for a quote, please include your word count and the timeframe you require your document returned by.
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Academic publishing is serious business (and I have a lot to say about this). However, when you come to me looking for editing assistance for your research articles I will work with you to make sure it conforms with the journal’s style guides and expectations. My best quality is my ability to turn a long sentence into a short one! Journal articles have tight word limits, and my editing will preserve your intended meaning and breadth of content in the fewest words possible. I can do this because I am a well established writer across 60+ academic books, articles, reports etc. that have been cited over 1,000 times and downloaded over 60,000 times, but also because I am not you! I bring a keen eye observant of detail that is not attached to the intellectual and emotional labour that underpins it. It can be liberating for writers to pass it to someone else and tidy up its preciseness and conciseness. It’s a joy for me to see your document take neat shape, and all comments and suggestions are made in ways that respect how much you’ve done already while bridging the gap I know journals will expect as a previous journal editor myself. Get in touch for a quote.
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When I first opened my PWIA consultancy, I designed the service to assist universities in their decision-making because gender disparity in who is recognised and remunerated as a thought leader is not an individual woman’s problem - the fault lies with the structural design of academia which has embedded codes about whose labour has value and worth. Sadly, it was not surprising that no universities took up the service in the two years it was open - probably because they did not want to be told that their decision-making was not as meritocratic as they believe it to be. After much wrestling, I decided to re-open part of my original service to support women with their promotions application. (The remaining content has been archived and is accessible from the footer). This is not done in the belief that they are in need of fixing, nor that I should monetise my labour by capitalising on systemic discrimination. It is done knowing that women who have engaged my services in the past found it helpful to have an ally who truly sees them and the unfair systems they navigate, and learn how to word their achievements in ways that fully ‘sell’ how much they have done and how much others have gained from it. Fresh independent eyes can help do this. Learn more about the service options here.
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This is a recently new option I now offer within my service range; responding to requests from PhD scholars whose supervisors may not have the full necessary expertise the thesis covers between them. Please get in touch if this sounds like you, and we can discuss your needs further. I will work with your primary and secondary supervisor to ensure the mentoring team around you are clear about their respective roles. As someone who would only be working with you and your main supervisors occasionally throughout your candidature, I can provide feedback on draft thesis chapters as an example of my contribution (by publication or otherwise). Universities prefer their PhD scholars to have supervisors that are salaried staff. However, these staff have workloads that meet criteria for modern slavery which can compromise the time and attention HDR (Higher Degree by Research) students require to become competent professionals in their future. If funds are available for occasional external PhD supervision, I’ll be happy to provide a third voice.
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If you would like to engage me as a research consultant, I’ll be happy to see how I can help your work. I can advise on matters relating to neoliberal academia, racism and sexism in academia, and child maltreatment across cultures. I can also talk about the new cognitive bias I have identified - the sense of agency bias; the result of which means that accountability is moral not objective. Please note that if you are looking to engage me for contract research, the final output cannot involve deletions or changes of my work without my approval (learned the hard way from prior IP theft). What I love best is working with fellow experts with whom I can engage in a deep knowledge exchange, so that I too grow in my intellectual and emotional capacities as we each share what we know. I look forward to meeting you and working together to make sure that rigorous research informs the practices and policies your organisation wishes to implement.
Resources
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After enduring 65 rejections of 13 of my research manuscripts in the 2 years just before I left the sector (and which finally broke me to do so), I knew my voice was being silenced in the traditional peer review system because the gatekeepers had too much power to question my knowledge and credibility. When they did let me in, it cost me thousands of dollars in open access fees which as a part-time working mother I did not have. Alongside the nearly $118K wage theft, it was clear academia was not built for its academics - it was built for business, and money and reputation ruled decisions. I built Scholar Freedom so that researchers whose voices are silenced and erased in the traditional system had somewhere to go, their labour, knowledge, and findings could get visibility, and all academics had an opportunity to shift the profits currently going to the publishing fat cats (at $20+ billion p.a.) back into their pocket since they did the work and have earned and deserve it. You can join for free today!
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My book, Working with ethnic minorities and across cultures in Western child protection systems (Routledge), is stocked in 200+ libraries across the globe. It can be used by researchers, child protection departments, and non-government organisations (NGOs) to inform their teaching, practice, and policy. In a book review by Pam Freeman (2019), she said: “This comprehensive work is relevant to any academic readers of social work practice where cultural knowledge, policy and practices are vital components in decision making. It is coherently structured, and behoves practitioners to work on a subjective ‘case by case’ child centred and family-focused basis. It is scholarly work, with child welfare at heart. It interweaves theory and practice in a balanced critical way but is also very accessible to the reader who may have faced similar cultural dilemmas. Whilst any discourse on this topic can be politically sensitive, and controversial, the author argues that ignoring differences between human groups in favour of notions of commonality does not always provide equity in cultural safety. This stimulating book is highly recommended for social work practice but also opens up a more general reflective debate about the need for social change and empowerment of all citizens.”
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All across the world – in every country and in every culture – child sexual abuse is not something people talk about. It is just too taboo. But cultures are also different from one another, so the way to ‘open up the can of worms’ is also different. For example, some cultures stay silent because talking about it would harm the family’s name and reputation, and chances of a good marriage for all daughters in the family. The problem with silence – no matter which culture you come from – is that the child remains vulnerable to re-victimisation. Over the long-term, they may suffer immense psychological harm including suicidality. To not even have to face the burden of choice – ‘do I protect the family’s name or the child’s safety?’ – prevention is key. This, in turn, requires accurate knowledge about child sexual abuse. The purpose of the ‘No more silence’ website is to provide readers with information about a research project that aims to do just this – give various sectors of the Australian and world-wide community accurate information about child sexual abuse and cultures to help protect children from the risk of sexual harm. The conceptual framework of this study is that a whole-of-community approach is necessary for better protecting ‘culturally and linguistically diverse’ (CALD) children from risk of sexual harm.
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Wondering why so few ‘culturally and linguistically diverse’ (CALD) victims/survivors access your services? Come and learn about what’s holding them back from speaking up, the barriers may be deeper than you realise. Once you know what they are, you can deliver a safe and compassionate service to someone who walks through your door and may have no one else to turn to. There are six modules that you can work through at your own pace. Payment is essential for attaining 5 hours of Continuing Professional Development (CPD) accreditation, otherwise donations are strongly appreciated. The program suits practitioners such as social workers, counselors, psychologists, and GPs and can also be used by researchers, policy-makers, and CALD communities. On completion, you will gain confidence in your knowledge about child sexual abuse and cultural diversity, competency in ethical and informed decision-making, and a deeper understanding about yourself. The modules cover terminology for this group, making sense of prevalence data, differences in susceptibility to myths like stranger danger, cultural competency within service organisations, working effectively with interpreters, and navigating white privilege and patriarchy.
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Academia is my true love! Don’t be fooled by how critical I am of it. Rage is grief, and grief is love. I will never forget that first day when I walked onto campus as a new undergraduate student, and just knew I was home in my tribe. I could feel the electricity of what was possible. Every kind of person surrounded me, and it was a utopia of diversity in thought. The learning potential was boundless. But that was nearly 30 years ago. Something drastic happened in that time. It’s called: neoliberalism. The institution’s implicit hierarchy, which I was too naïve to see at the time, became impossible to miss. Manageralism took full hold, and academics went from respected, trusted, and well paid members of society to philosophers wasting taxpayers’ dollars who need to justify their contribution to society by how much research grant money they could attract. We were no longer a public institution that stood for education and symbolised opportunity, we were a business hiding behind a false ‘not-for-profit’ status. My blog tracks this devastation.
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Original PWIA website
Just before I left academia in 2020 - after 20 years of service to the sector - I launched my website ‘Promoting women in academia’. It was a reaction to being denied promotion to Associate Professor. It took me a year to prepare that application, between caring for children and hundreds of students, while knowing that two years worth of labour had gone unpaid because the workload and expectations for performance were that unreasonable.
You need to fight for yourself
I arrived at that university having completed my PhD 7 years prior, and a postdoctoral fellowship, and had 10 years of full-time experience in research and teaching. Yet, they offered me a Level A contract - the lowest possible - saying that even though they knew I was overqualified they couldn’t do better because that’s what the position was advertised at. Being naive, fearful of authority, having no mentors to advise me that that’s just how big businesses work and you need to speak up for yourself, and quickly moving cities to get married to a lovely person with three children - I took that contract without question.
A new mum
A year later, I tried to change my contract. HR would take months to reply to each of my emails. I then went on maternity leave. In the end, it was nearly 2 years before they finally met me in person. My Head of School was our witness. A week later when the paperwork came through, the new contract was at a lower level than what we had agreed to. Shocked that they would go back on their word, and exhausted with a newborn and as a mother of four, I did not have it in me to continue picking that battle.
Panting to stay in the game
Fast forward a few years, and I’m keen as beans to put in a prestigious ARC Future Fellowship application and catch up a lot of lost time. I’ve published like crazy to keep my track record up as best I can, and it was clearly amazing for a part-timer. But no matter which research centre leader I went to, my track record was deemed too low. I finally went to a different university, and while my application was not successful it was the support I received there that was the lasting legacy of that experience: somebody thought I was worthy.
It’s the right thing to do
Having invested so much intellectual and emotional labour in preparing an application for a project about a group of people who rarely receive compassion and care, and which took me a year to write, I decided to at least complete Stage 1. I applied for sabbatical to do this, but my one and only application in 20 years was denied. They said the proposal was underdeveloped, but that if I reapplied the following year in a non-teaching trimester I would be successful. (Bullshit barometer now rapidly rising). I did the work anyway because it was the right thing to do by the people the project was for. In my mind, the effort would be squared with a promotion to a more commensurate title. My application was a no-brainer, filled with description of the work I had done and testimonials of its quality, so it was a kick in the guts when it was denied. One gatekeeper said, “I can’t see what you’ve done since last promotion”, and the other (who also denied my sabbatical) said “It’s good to be bold, but don’t you think you’re being too bold?”
Meritocracy my arse
Racism and sexism are insidious, and their effects so drastic that middle-aged women are now the fastest growing group at risk of homelessness. Living in poverty for a decade as I tried to feed many mouths on a part-time wage and maintain an exceptional standard of work that was never going to be recognised while gaslit with the lie that is meritocracy, led me to create a service in which I would provide an independent review of women’s applications for promotion. No university took it up. Two years later, I shut up shop. So that the (cou)rage to speak up did not go to waste, I archived that content. You can access it from the footer.
Networking, narcissism, and IP theft
Academia is an industry where if you play your cards right - and they have less to do with good hard work than it is willing to admit - you can be on a $250K+ salary within 7 years of getting your PhD. Others like me can go backwards from a starting salary of $80K gross (1.0 FTE) to $60K gross (0.5 FTE) 20 years later - predictable penalties for being a woman, brown, with children. Laundry, shopping, cooking, and cleaning for 6 was my daily reality, and why networking and visibility were things I clutched at. This unfairness was so great that after it worked in stealth for two decades, it finally accumulated to a correct diagnosis: ‘moral injury’.
Moral injury
My moral injury birthed something even more magical than my original PWIA website - Scholar Freedom: the world’s first independent publishing platform where researchers can set their own prices and get paid by their readers. You see, part of why all the gatekeepers could not see what I had done was because of the 65 rejections of 13 research manuscripts by journal editors and reviewers. This meant I was unable to attract prestigious external funding, which is all universities want. If I had had that, I would have been promoted.
Whistleblowing
I made a submission to the national Senate Inquiry on wage theft in 2021, and took my case to the federal Fair Work Ombudsman in 2022. None of it worked - a brutal reminder of how powerless most people are in these systems. If I had stolen more than $100K from them, I might be in jail. Calling out the wage theft in universities is like calling the sky blue - truth in plain sight that everyone knows. Yet, burden of proof fell on the victim who lost in the face of time-stamped evidence of daily hours worked collected over 7 years that proved 2 had gone unpaid (most from teaching). Power does not cede itself, and trying to change systems and policies that governments implement at will (like neoliberalism) is like throwing rocks at a rocket.
Happiness is sweet: You win the race by leaving it
I’m battered and bruised from a long-sustained workplace trauma where I learned that working hard is a really stupid thing to do because it has little power against the power of gender and skin colour. In Australia, 67% of Professors are white men, 23% are white women, and 2% are women of colour - these are not the stats at graduation. It has been a psychological and financial violence for me working in neoliberal academia. But I still smile with joy everyday about the life I have lived, grateful for the gorgeous caring husband who has listened to me every day while sharing the domestic load, bearing witness to the thriving children around me who prove that nothing was in vain, with a kick-arse mission to change academic publishing forever by allowing researchers to claim back their voice and money because too many big institutions are benefitting from taking these from them.
A head full of knowledge
While I’ve left the building, I do have a head full of information that you can still benefit from! A summary of the services and resources I offer are listed above. Your email is welcome at any time!