It is now possible to hire me to come to your institution as a speaker. I can address all levels, from first-year undergraduates to full professors, as well relevant administrators. The seminars normally run for 3 hours. But I can also present them as shorter, informal talks.
Research as a Second Language
Even academics who have English as their mother tongue, struggle with the “academic” idiom of their field, much as one might struggle to learn a second language. And you do not, of course, become conversant in another language simply by learning rules of grammar, or listening to others speak it. You have to actually use the language if you want to learn to use it effectively. In this seminar, I will talk about how to use exemplars (research that has been published by others) to develop a sense of the style of your field. What should you be looking for when you read the literature? What can you use in your writing? There are some easy ways to get over the strangeness of the scholarly literature by understanding what it is for. This is especially important for those who are working in interdisciplinary contexts, where standards and conventions will sometimes even conflict. In this seminar I provide participants with a concept of knowledge that ranges from the classic "justified, true belief", to the standard "research as a conversation" pedagogy of writing instructors, to my definition centered on the ability to write a prose paragraph, and work this definition up into a full-blown "philosophy of writing".
Writing Process Reengineering
Many academic writers need to learn how to do a determined amount of work in a determined amount of hours. This seminar is devoted to the perennial problem of managing the space and the time of one’s writing. We will talk about the space in which you write both as a room, i.e., a literal space where your body goes to write, and as a page, i.e., a literary space where your words end up. As a provisional guide, I provide participants with my all-purpose outline of a 40-paragraph journal article. As to time, people write at their best in sessions of between 30 minutes and 3 hours, preferably every day. Each week offers them about 5 of these sessions, which occupy their attention for no more than half the working day. The seminar concludes with an 8-Week or 16-Week Challenge (depending on when in the semester the seminar is held), in which participants are asked to think about how many of the ideally 120 or 240 hours in such periods they will spend writing. And, of course, what they will write.
Capstone Seminar
As we approach the end of the challenge period, I can return to hold a seminar to evaluate this attempt to “reengineer” the writing process, both individually and at the institution. Have we seen any personal or cultural changes? Are these changes desirable? Based on the authors’ experiences, there will normally be a great many questions, and this seminar offers an occasion to take the most useful lessons into planning the writing process, which will pick up again after the summer season of exams, conferences and vacations.
How to Manage a Writer
(For deans, department heads, research directors)
Writers, like writing processes, are notoriously difficult to manage. Editors and co-authors know this directly, while department heads, research directors, and deans encounter the problem in a more indirect way, usually in the context of assessing publication performance after the fact. Over the years, working as an editor and writing coach, I have developed a number of effective ways to deal with the problem of writing proactively. It requires lifting the shroud of mystery that often conceals the writing processes of individual authors—even from the themselves. It also demands knowing when not to lift that shroud. In this informal talk, I will share my experiences with the aim of providing some insight into what keeps writers from working at their best, and how they can be helped to work better. It is important to keep in mind that administrators and faculty members have entirely mutual interest in publication. The institution benefits in the rankings; the scholar wins increased career mobility. This shared interest must always be the basis of management in academic contexts.
Fees and Availability
I live in Copenhagen, which lets me travel easily to most major European cities. I am open to traveling further abroad, but the details will have to be arranged on a case-by-case basis.
My standard fee is 2000€ per seminar. If you order two, my fee is 3400€, and I'll give you three for the price of two if you order them all at once (4000€). This does not include taxes and expenses (mainly travel and accommodation).
If you'd like to hear me speak, drop me a line at thomas at basboell dot com.
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