About me
I specialise in helping academics refine their work for publication or submission, from PhD candidates navigating their final submissions to journal authors preparing a manuscript for peer review.
I specialise in academic texts in the social sciences and humanities and written in English. I have extensive experience in working with authors for whom English is an additional language.
I am an Accredited Text Editor (English), certified by the Professional Editors' Guild, South Africa.
I hold a PhD in History and Anthropology from the University of Michigan (2007). My previous degrees were awarded by the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa.
The work I do
copy-editing of academic texts
proofreading
building of indexes
journal administration/management
Why I can help you
Because of my university studies …
… I can think along with your argument and can catch when it is too loose or unclear for the reader.
Because of the writing and analytical skills I honed during my studies …
… I can help you improve your text to reach an academic audience with clarity and conviction.
Because of my own writing …
… I understand how hard it is to hammer out an argument and find the best narrative structure to tell a story.
Because of a decade of experience editing journal articles and books …
… I know the academic publishing industry and know what is required from a text for submission.
Because of a decade of experience in managing a journal …
… I understand the journal publishing industry from behind the scenes and can guide you through the steps to publication.
Because of my attention to detail …
… I have the capability for close, careful reading and the spotting of mistakes.
Latest continuing development courses attended
2023
Webinars offered by the Professional Editors’ Guild on house style; academic editing; macros; formatting; track changes; the comma; grammar
2024
Certificate in Editing Academic Texts, University of Cape Town: The Essential Fundamentals
Webinars offered by the Professional Editors’ Guild on word styles; tables; search engine optimisation; academic texts; plain language in academic texts; Canva; grammar
Here you can see some of the publications that I have had the privilege of working on
Portfolio
Journal articles
Ethnoscripts (since 2021) [https://journals.sub.uni-hamburg.de/ethnoscripts/issue/archive]
South African Historical Journal (since 2020) [https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/rshj20/current]
Anthropology Southern Africa (2014–2024) [https://www.tandfonline.com/journals/rasa20]
Books
Hannah J. Dawson, Making a Life: Young Men on Johannesburg’s Urban Margins (Wits University Press, 2025)
Fazil Moradi, Being Human: Genocide and Hospitality in Kurdistan-Iraq (Rutgers, 2024)
Leila Patel, Sophie Plagerson, and Isaac Chinyoka, eds, Handbook on Social Protection and Social Development in the Global South (Edward Elgar, 2023)
Translations
Basler Afrika Bibliographien, Annual reports
Indexing
Sarah Nuttall, ed, Your History with Me: The Films of Penny Siopis (Duke University Press, 2024)
Testimonials
I … thank Caroline Jeannerat, copy editor, whose thorough proofreading of the manuscript was another invitation to improve it.
Deborah Puccio-Den, Mafiacraft: An Ethnography of Deadly Silence (HAU, 2021)
Caroline Jeannerat smoothed out the rough edges of the manuscript, edited the language to ensure consistency (for example, in the use of metaphors), and painstakingly checked and corrected the references.
Leila Patel and Shireen Hassim, editors of Granting Justice: Cash, Care, and the Child Support Grant by Tessa Hochfeld (HSRC Press, 2022)
As editor, Caroline Jeannerat cannot be thanked enough for the care that she takes with one’s words and the worlds they are struggling to conjure.
Srila Roy, Changing the Subject: Feminist Politics in Liberalised India (Duke University Press, 2022)
The manuscript has been much enriched by the deep reading and superb editing of Caroline Jeannerat, whose skills in these matters exceed any that I know of.
Robert Gordon, South Africa's Dreams: Ethnologists and Apartheid in Namibia (Berghahn, 2021)