ReNEW Emerging Scholars Workshop on Writing in Academic English

Writing in Academic English: A Hands-On Workshop for Nordic Scholars

4 ECTS, 2–4 April 2020, Stockholm

The three-day course Academic Writing in Modern English – Examples from Nordic Studies is meant to give recent PhDs and PhD candidates useful help in writing academic English. English can be a challenge, especially as a second language, something well recognized by scholars who edit English-language publications. The course will include group and individual exercises, a hand-book of common mistakes, and discussions and lectures on how to write academic English.

The course’s main focus, however, will be on a longer English-language piece (3500–7000 words), submitted by participants in advance – hopefully, a piece intended for a conference or publication. Students will read and comment on each other’s papers, discuss them during the course itself, and finally – after they have re-submitted the paper with revised English (if such revision is necessary) – receive the teacher’s specific suggestions for editing and review.

The workshop begins at noon on Thursday, April 2nd, and continues until 4 p.m. on Saturday, April 4th. It takes place at Klubbensborg, in Stockholm (). We will fully fund 15 selected PhD candidates and post-docs. This includes the course itself, meals, accommodation, and a Saturday excursion – by boat - to Drottningholm Castle. We cannot, however, cover travel costs, but ask participants to meet these with the assistance of their home institutions.

The course will be led by Madeleine Hurd, Associate Professor of History at Södertörn University. She is a native English speaker, with a PhD from Harvard University, and twenty years’ experience in translating, editing and revising English-language texts in both the humanities and social sciences. She specialises in texts by Scandinavian and German scholars. Professor Norbert Götz will serve as co-teacher. Besides his contribution as someone constantly working on improving his own English, he has valuable experience in editing the texts of others and in employing in-house and commercial language editing services.

The deadline for application is midnight, the 17th of January, 2020. To apply, send an e-mail to (subject line “Academic Writing Course”). Include your name, discipline, university, the working title of your current thesis or research project, and a 150-word abstract of the paper you would like to submit to the course. Selection will be based, in part, on applicants’ previous participation in ReNEW activities; we also seek to provide an equitable representation of ReNEW partner universities. We will then circulate a detailed course program, including deadlines for pre-submission of papers (and for reading each other’s papers before the course), as well as a short reading list.