About

I am a Lecturer in Publishing and teach in the Creative Writing and Publishing BA and the Publishing MA courses.

I have worked in the educational publishing industry for more than twenty-five years — twenty-three as an editor of print and digital content — for such companies as Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press, and Cengage Learning. My editorial motto is "pursue editorial excellence without compromising deadlines and budgets."

At University of Derby, I am privileged to share my passion for all things editorial and publishing with students.

Teaching responsibilities

I teach the following modules for the BA (Hons) Creative Writing and Publishing:

• 4PU506: Writing and Publishing Fiction
• 5PU507: Design and Production
• 5PU508: Copyediting for Writers and Editors
• 5PU509: Reading the Contemporary

• 7PU506: Books and Society
• 7PU509: Magazine Publishing
• 7PU998: Research Dissertation
• 7PU999: Major Publishing Project

Professional interests

My lifelong professional interest is that of editing. I am particularly interested in how editing as a type of paratextual 'production' is an integral part of the publishing process. This involves how editing not only is executed in practice on the page but also contributes to a publication's reception overall.

Research interests

My research interests intersect publishing studies, literary studies and book history, with a particular focus on editorial theory and practice, contemporary educational publishing, the historical development of publishing technologies, and British and Australian print culture from the late seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries.

Membership of professional bodies

• Association for Publishing Education (APE)
• Institute of Professional Editors (IPEd)
• Bibliographical Society of Australia and New Zealand (BSANZ)
• Society for the History of Authorship, Reading and Publishing (SHARP)

Qualifications

• Bachelor of Arts (Honours), Early English Literature and Language — University of Sydney, Australia (1997)
• Masters (by Research), Publishing — University of Melbourne, Australia (2012)
• PhD, Publishing — Monash University, Australia (2016)

Recent conferences

I have presented my research on contemporary publishing studies, editorial theory and practice, and book history, such as nineteenth-century Australian print culture, at more than 20 international conferences since 2012, including:

• ‘Writing and writers’ choices: taking an existential approach to teaching the power of the written word’, SHARP 2022 conference, ‘Power of the Written Word’, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, 11–15 July 2022
• '(Im)mutable publishing ecologies: Editors' place within the COVID-10 gig economy', By the Book conference 7, Paris, 20–21 June 2022
• ‘The invisibility of editors and the Australian COVID-19 gig economy’, Independent Publishing Conference, ‘Publishing and the Environment’, The Wheeler Centre, Melbourne, 25 November 2021
• ‘Living g/local: the "interconnected stories" of John Pascoe Fawkner’, SHARP 2021 conference (online), ‘Moving Texts’, 26–30 July 2021
• ‘Header to footer, verso to recto, cover to cover — editing within and outside the margins’, Institute of Professional Editors (IPEd) conference 2021 (online), ‘Editing on the edges’, 28–30 June 2021
• ‘Peripatetic printers, technologies and practices: connections and collaborations across the Strait’, Bibliographical Society of Australia and New Zealand (BSANZ) Inc. conference (online), ‘The History of the Book and the Future of the World’, 28 November – 32 December 2020
• ‘Refashioning ideas of taste and nineteenth-century cultural production in the digital age’, Bibliographical Society of Australia and New Zealand (BSANZ) Inc. conference, ‘Tradition & Innovation: Readers, Books and Libraries’, The University of Melbourne, 28–29 November 2019
• ‘Printers’ sites of need: how a lack of resources brought Australia together’, Independent Publishing Conference, ‘Sites of Publishing’, The Wheeler Centre, Melbourne, 21 November 2019
• ‘Aesthetic Technological Determinism and Colonial Publishers’ Resistance to British Imperialism’, of the convened panel ‘Taste as an Emerging Force: Colonial Publishers’ Response to Imperialism’, SHARP 2019 conference, ‘Indigeneity, Nationhood, and Migrations of the Book’, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, 15–19 July 2019

Experience in industry

In 2020–2021, I completed consultancy for various editorial associations in Australia in the form of delivering workshops and presentations:

• ‘Referencing and bibliographies as technical paratexts’: One-hour presentation for the Canberra Society of Editors on 25 August 2021
• 'Editing references and bibliographies — principles and practice': Two-day workshops via Zoom for Editors Victoria on 7 and 14 November 2020, as well as the Canberra Society of Editors on 21–22 November 2020
• ‘Demystifying Educational Publishing’: One-hour presentation for members of the Institute of Professional Editors (IPEd) on 29 October 2020

Additional interests and activities

In January 2023, I was appointed Secretary for the Association for Publishing Education (APE), as well as co-editor of the book history and publishing studies journal Script & Print.

In the media

In 2021, I was interviewed by Leaf Mag about my experience as both a practising editor in the educational publishing industry and a publishing academic.

Recent publications

Monographs

• Teaching Publishing and Editorial Practice: The Transition from University to Industry (Cambridge University Press, 2022)
• Evolution of Editorial Style in Early Modern England (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019)

Book chapters

• ‘On the road to the standardisation of the printed page: the legacies of John Degotardi and Benjamin Fryer’ in Book Publishing in Australia: A Living Legacy, ed. by Millicent Weber & Aaron Mannion (Monash University Publishing, 2019): 97–115

Edited journal issues

• Hargrave, J & Peiser, M, ‘Women and Other "Undesirables": Female Creative and Technical Labor in Nineteenth-Century Print Culture’, Issue 18.2 (Summer 2022 Special Issue).

Journal articles

• ‘Peripatetic printers of early nineteenth-century Australia: the interconnected stories of Howe, Bent and Fawkner’, Antipodes, ‘Book History in Australia and New Zealand’ special issue, 35:2 (2022): 216–232
• ‘Printer in the middle: The Copyright Act 1879, the NSW Government Printing Office and legal deposit in nineteenth-century Australia’, Media History, 27:4 (2020): 438–456
• ‘Aphra Behn: cultural translator and editorial intermediary’, Ceræ: An Australasian Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, 4 (2018): 1–31. [Received Award for Best Article]
• ‘Editorial networks in practice: Early-modern style guides and the editing of Piers Plowman’, Oxford Research in English, ‘Networks’ issue 2 (2016): 7–22
• ‘Joseph Moxon: A re-fashioned appraisal’, Script & Print, 39:3 (2015): 163–81
• ‘Educational Publishing: An Industry in Transition in the Digital Age’, TXT: Exploring the boundaries of the book (2014): 36–47
• ‘Paperless Mark-Up: Editing Educational Texts in a Digital Environment’, Publishing Research Quarterly, 30:2 (2014): 212–22
• ‘Disruptive Conclusions: The Future of Australian Educational Publishing’, Journal of Scholarly Publishing, 45:2 (2014): 186–96
• ‘Disruptive Technological History: Papermaking to Digital Printing’, Journal of Scholarly Publishing, 44:3 (2013): 221–36
• ‘Disruptive Relationships: Past and Present State of Educational Publishing in Australia’, Publishing Research Quarterly, 28:3 (2012) 236–49